
! 




7 ^^ 



‘ ► '■ ^ «'•■ <»ri'^'.-s<A/»3SffltiJi»*'^.i*'" ■ '‘a- 





»> 


■ _j ■ ?■■ ■ ,■ . ..:.W^^. ■ ■;■; f. 


'». 'f- 


?1 




1 

i'ijT 




i- ■ .^1 f J 

■ R* 


f . - 


" J 


> ■• • 5i* 


^1 

^y 


►r- JTJ'l 

> KfV 

v-t;-' V’ 


T -■ 






* / 


■< - 


5.. 


4 ' I J > I 


■ - ^ 

I- ?!-*.. . , ■ / W 

I'fl’ ^ V ' --f/- 


- 

» A ^ V 

»V: 


'»r 

••W -‘r.\W--^' 




■_a: 


"s3 fca 


♦J ro 




^’n k 


^ « 


75it ^ ^ 

Li ^ vTdl5^''Lr^fc3i ’-''"^*^5 ■ <^ 




f. 


ki-* . 


^ v:> / *' 

V- 

* 


. .1 

' . rw V .'Vi 


m -T* 








m 

r ‘ ^ 






I . 


I - w 

• U /.] 






V 






Sa.** *'*k^i 


• * 


I 


'ti 








' *1 N/i* 

<cr^A 


1 • 1 


I 




Jt»- • 


TV* ♦ *' 

■ l^.y.y!’ » 


I “*11 
i ^ 


€ 




I 


‘^'^V 


/. . y^ ^ I 










*t r 




.It 






ii-l 


j ) 


')\ 




.•. r .' Y V 


'■•'it* 

^ i i rl f 


'■•■ ' ■ *'-*‘Tj«fr>.' viAaiaKn - >•'■ ■ ^^>?. 

•/.- - ^sT'';'-'; ' ' . ' • *. ” 

3/ ^ ' ' Ja* ■ • ‘ --j» -% wl 


'r 


in 




i 


•ij - 


•V 


.’T . .'f- 


t** 








'^4 








; » ' »• I 


‘■H* 


».■ * 




V. 


JV 


-:,»,-'*IPbA -. r-*. 


. H J 


»y A 






U - 


V*v 




'1; 


Mi 








rj 


' > 




V- 


'- a^r'' 


'Ik'. 


'* • 


I1 


.1 "% 




f 




.* « 


•f^.. 


.If: 


% 


»« 




..‘.j 




»L 




i 


./LI*'. 


» 


■i^ 


*4 V 


r« 


lVA^,\»;,.JV|v:fV,’r. . 

'i..i';vi''\'.y.-''i ■:■'.■ : 




•,.V 


1*^1 ■ 
J 


M. 


V •* 1 


r. 




*<•1 












>ri 


4 ■ 






e«i' 




li-Sn' >1 


tW" ”# -I.'; y ^..‘ * ^ ' ' f' jV^# '^•■' '■ 

i • * • * .' »,*» 
















> • •. V ,; ... - - ,. |. y 

^ - 4..^^ 


!^i?a 




rf- 


;ife 






.*•> 


V., 




R-.. V» ' * ' V.,-'., 
''■“ r:~’ 

.r- ■ -' > >-'•■ 


y 


.V-- 


k> 


'1> 


,r\ 


L-* ‘ ". • 




V\ y.'i-; 


* i- » -L 

■« ^Mlv 




'» . 


'-■V. 




V* 






’ ■» ' »• ■:;^v ' 

• A , L' . • A V 








'S 


.< 4 


* - » 




-.t' 






' 3 . 


>in 7 * i 


t « ^ > V- ' 

■Y * 




% s > 


>WK 


/!• 




* V 




,n 






rV 


r 


I 




9t 

« 




' 4 





% 




$ 


\ 





» 










/| 



1 






I 


« 






I 


r 


I 




/ 


t 




* 


% 



9 


f 


I 


f •« 


f 


« 
7 


k 



4 

* 


I 



9 






« 


^*1 





t 


» 






I 


t 


« 








.1 




t 








> 


V 


k 




« 

4 





9 . 


t 



* 


t 


% 


/ 


t 



I 



THE 100 BEST NOVELS. 


®Iic Jailg Jtln[arg 

SELECTED BY THE EDITOR . . . 

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF 

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, K.C.LE., C.S.L 

H. D. TRAILL, D.C.L. and 

W. L. COURTNEY, M.A, LL.D. . . - 








»»v 


FJT * 


v« 


K| 


p 



‘•' rk‘.' ■•^-^ 


I * ll^ ' • » ' 




v'r 



WE ■ .'iT \f ’J"! * 




* (* 





f^'' 

’ ■■ ' ' 

'v' . t V- -?• 

Kl*^ / I 





.'Tv •; A '.Ul . iS'L' . . 

^ ’ ■ ■ . _ *51 . i 


- •• v‘*- ' '7 ^‘- . 

■ V:‘‘* 



\ V 


' t 

%f^- .ktv 


.y • *'• -^r. 

‘-xi . • jtf 

jX^^ijalBCL ’JfS 







f’* 


■»4* ■ V- 

“s^ '■\k 




i’ ‘ ’ 


1 







^ ^Vi SL 







sL fi 


Vl 




T 






• i 


VI* 


■ • ^ ^■;- 
• *> y 


''■ *i K” - - 

V ■' • ‘•■'W 'V'W * 

% 1% [• 


s. 






/» 




. 'ii ‘ 


IV 


-y 

v^‘ 






V>.VA 


• -fe'^: II 














_iAV 




iW^ 


V 




r v: 


E<* V 


iri 


*■; ^ • Jc 


• 1/ 


.<1 


' AV 


-ISi 


^ *» 


c’i 


..' y 


*4> 




■V/ 


1 r 






I 


r ii 


t/ 


. :: -¥ ■•’■« 

■ ■ ' ■ ■ 12' V ^ 

^ ^ ^ - . ,^f -m 2 u A d 


4-; 


'^i 




■/ 


I > ’ .-^ V.. 




I'j A 


rv 




. j -I. 


>, M 


X 


"A- 




. I 




* M ' ' • «.M|A>LlKf|Hl <1 t J 

.. " , ., ^?.5St * tV(''’' ■■' 

1'^;. 


' ■> Jt' • -■ ■■*■!{ '■^’'i, 

]r>.: \ ' : '• 


- !'/,'■ A 


F-> 


• I 


Vh 


F» 


^ -. 




►!» % 


* *''W^ Pj— 

'.t% .t •...■■®\ ''■• 






ST’ 






II k 


y> ■ 








•jf 

^ i-^ • » 

^’V V 




_,: .1^ 

"i.'fll ■’ •. «, 

^'v^* ^ J*. 




* » 


.♦%4 ■ 


i ■ 




. ' 

K ' ^ 

A 4 

' '' ->1 - - . 




I 








THE RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

G EOF FRY HAMFVN 


ly 

HENRY KINGSLEY 




^/r// A MEMOIR OF HENRY KINGSLEY 

BY 

CLEMENT SHORTER 
ILLUSTRATED BV HERBERT RAILTON 


NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 


• « 



LP CP 

V 



y • 



A 

• 

• • • 

• •• 


• 

<» • « 

• • 

9 4 4 

•• •* 
• • 

w 

• 

• 

• • 

• • • 

• • 
• • 

• • 

• • 

• • 

• 

• 

« 

• 

• 

0 

• 

• • 

A 

• 4 

4 4 4 

• 

• 

* 

• • 

• 

• • 

• • 

••r 

• 

• • « 

• ♦ • 

• • 

• t 

w 

4 


e 


t 












f 





MY FATHEE AND MOTHEE 


THIS BOOK, 

THE FRUIT OF SO MANY WEARY 
YEARS OF SEPARATION, 

IS DEDICA^TED 


WITH THE DEEPEST LOVE AND REVERENCE. 




HAKNACK llECTORY. 


A NOTE ON HENRY KINGSLEY. 


The story of Henry Kingsley’s life may well be told in a few 
words, because that life was on the whole a failure. The world 
will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure unaccom- 
panied by the halo of remoteness. To write the life of Charles 
Kingsley would be a quite different task. Here was success, 
victorious success, sufficient, indeed, to gladden the heart even of 
Hr. Smiles — success in the way of Church preferment, success in 
the way of public veneration, success, above all, as a popular 
novelist, poet, and preacher. Canon Kingsley’s life has been 
written in two substantial volumes containing abundant letters and 
no indiscretions. In this biography the name of Henry Kingsley 
is absolutely ignored. And yet it is not too much to say that, 
when time has softened his memory for us, as it has softened 
for us the memories of Marlowe and Hums and many another, the 
public interest in Henry Kingsley will be stronger than in his 
now more famous brother. 

vii 



viii 


HENRY KINGSLEY. 


Henry Kingsley was the author of “ Ravenshoe,” “ Geoflfry 
Hamlyn,” and “ The Hillyars and the Burtons.” Signs are not 
wanting that these works have a luture as well as a past and a 
present. Treating, as two of them do, of Australian life, they have 
naturally sold by thousands at the Antipodes. But a sale of 
thousands, however pleasing to publisher and author, is not a 
circumstance over which the critic grows unduly exhilarated. It 
is the lot of many ephemeral books. Have Henry Kingsley’s 
books the quality which stays? One quality, judged as a whole, 
they undoubtedly lack — the supreme quality of style ; but there 
are numberless passages of singular beauty and felicity, and there 
is one fortunate accident which makes these stories independent 
of style — the accident of environment. Henry Kingsley alone 
among novelists has focussed for us in two of these hooks the 
early life of a new country, the first building up of a great 
commonwealth. His name must he writ large indeed in the 
annals of Australia, and in the Old Country there are critics of 
diverse tastes — critics like Mr. Swinburne, Mr. James Pajm, Mr. 
Andrew Lang, Mr. Augustine Birrell — who are united in appre- 
ciation of “Geoffry Hamlyn.” Assuredly, then, a few words 
concerning Henry Kingsley’s life need small apology. That they 
are hut few is due largely to the lack of material. Of corre- 
spondence there seems to be none extant — none, at any rate, 
available, and even ot the kind of biographical gossip which is 
to-day provided so abundantly about the living as well as about 
the dead there is hut little.* 

I 

The rectory of Chelsea, which still presents itself to view, 
surrounded by a high wall, not far from the old church in that 
classic district ot London, has a history. If only the house pos- 
sessed the autobiographical gift, it could tell far more interesting 
stories than mine of a famous family. Old Mr. Kingsley, who 
moved from Clovelly to Chelsea in 1836, lived here for several 
years, and during that time his sons Charles and Henry must 

• Even the “Dictionary of National Biography,” usually so adequate 
with men of importance, dismisses Henry Kiugsley with a few curt lines. 


HENEY KINGSLEY. 


IX 


have gone through quite a world of varied experience in the 
picturesque house with its still more picturesque garden. Of 
Henry, indeed, this may be said more than of Charles, who, when 
the family went to live at Chelsea, was seventeen years of age, 
and had already received the most salient impressions of his life. 
Charles was born at Holne Vicarage, Dartmoor, in 1819, and the 



BABNACK CHUKCH. 


Devonshire scenery was with him not only in infancy, hut when, 
in his eleventh year, his father moved to Clovelly. 

Mr. Kingsley was merely a curate at Holne ; he was rector of 
Barnack, in Nottinghamshire, where, in 1830, Henry first saw the 
light. “ Barnack Rectory,” says Mrs. Charles Kingsley in the 


•s 


HENKY KINGSLEY. 


‘‘Life ” of her husband, “ was a fine old house, built in the four- 
teenth century, and containing a celebrated haunted room called 
Button Cap, which is still looked upon with mysterious dread by 
the parishioners. On one occasion, when ill of brain fever, little 
Charles was moved into this room, and for years afterwards his 
imagination was haunted by the weird sights and sounds asso- 
ciated with that time in his memory. To this he attributed his 
strong dubility in the existence of ghosts in later years, telling 
his own children he had heard too many ghosts in old Button 
Cap’s room at Barnack to have much respect for them.” He de- 
scribes the room to Mrs. Francis Pelham, writing from Eversley in 
1864. “ Of Button Cap — he lived in the Great North Room at 

Barnack. I Imew him well. He used to walk across the room 
in flopping slippers, and turn over the leaves of books to find the 
missing deed, whereof he had defrauded the orphan and the widow. 
He was an old Rector of Barnack. Everybody heard him who 
chose. Nobody every saw him ; but in spite of that, he wore a 
flowered dressing-gown and a cap with a button on it. I never 
heard of any skeleton being found ; and Button Cap’s history had 
nothing to do with murder, only with avarice and cheating. Some- 
times he turned cross and played Polter-geist, as the Germans 
say, rolling the barrels in the cellar about with surprising noise,- 
which was undignified* So he was always ashamed of himself, 
and put them all back in their place before morning. I suppose 
he is gone now. Ghosts hate mortally a certificated National 
schoolmaster, and (being a vain and peevish generation) as soon 
as people give up believing in them go away in a huff — or perhaps 
some one has been laying phosphoric paste about, and he ate 
thereof and ran down to his pond, and drank till he burst. He 
was rats ! ” Alas ! a bay window has been added to the Button 
Cap room ; and as no self-respecting ghost could stand such 
prosaic sacrilege, the venerable terror of the Kingsley children has 
long since departed. At Barnack Henry Kingsley was born in 

* “ Charles Kingsley ; His Letters and Memoirs of his Life,” edited by 
his wife, vol. i. p. 84. 



I 






I 




t 



a 



mOi 





I 




... , 


a 



a 





/ # f 

% 




« 


I 




K 




t 


« 


‘ A 


S 


* 


» I 


I 


4 


• •# 


« 


. r 


« 


« 






« 




» 


• a* 





I 



I 




* 


4 


I 


. 



* 


I 



<4 


1 






i • 4 » 



A 



i;. . 




I* 



t 


1 


i 


1 

f 







a 

V 


•I I 




\ 

% 


« 


4 


• 'r» 




( 


I 


t 


/ 


1 


» • 







« 


9 


9 


f 

I 



t 





.“ife 


j 

« 

.‘arl 



HENRY KINGSLEY. 


xiii 


January, 1830, and he at least had no inspiration or impulse from 
the supernatural association of his birthplace, for his parents 
removed to Clovelly in the same year. He was about seven 
years of age when the removal to Chelsea took place. The old 
Chelsea of his boyhood is described in “ The Hilly ars and the 
Burtons.” The vicarage is there still, and the old church, but 
little enough else that was familiar to the boy even when, 
some years later, he went every day to King’s College School. 
One of the rooms in the house is pointed out by the present vicar 
as retaining some of the characteristics of that period, and as 
iiaving been the favourite sitting-room of the boys in their early 
years. The fine old-fashioned garden, however, is the most 
permanent feature. There may still be seen the mulberry-tree, 
planted, tradition has it, by Queen Elizabeth, and as flourishing 
now as in the days when the brothers flung themselves on the lawn 
under its shade ; there also are two fine lime-trees which old Mr. 
Kingsley planted some thirty years since. It is a restful spot, 
this garden, in the midst of a fierce hubbub of struggling humanity ; 
and two or three hundred yards away is the churchyard where 
Woodfall, the publisher of Junius,” lies buried, not far from Sir 
Thomas More. There also rests the Duchess of Northumberland, 
mother of Elizabeth’s Leicester and grandmother of Sir Philip 
Sidney. ‘‘ Four hundred years of memory are crowded into that 
dark old church,” says Henry Kingsley’s Joe Burton, ‘‘and the 
great flood of change beats round the walls, and shakes the door 
in vain, but never enters. The dead stand thick together there, 
as if to make a brave resistance to the moving world outside, 
which jars upon their slumber.” The tombs of the Lawrences 
in one of the small chapels have certainly a picturesquely weird 
effect, which is incalculably enhanced by a re-reading of “ The 
Hillyars and the Burtons.” 

From King’s College young Henry Kingsley went, in 1850, to 
Worcester College, Oxford. His brother Charles had gone to 
Magdalen College, Cambridge, twelve years earlier, and was now 
doing clerical duty in liis father’s parish in Chelsea, and writing 

Alton Locke.” For a brief glimpse of Henry Kingsley in his 


XIV 


HENKY KINGSLEY. 


college days I am indebted to the kindness of Sir Edwin 
Arnold.''' 

I knew Henry Kingsley very well and liked him very much,” 
he writes. “ We were not at the same college. He was at 
Worcester, I at University College. Nevertheless we were very 
constantly together, belonging to the same set, also to an eccentric 
club called ‘ The Fez.’ At the University he did nothing com- 
mensurate with his great natural abilities, for I consider him quite 
the equal in genius of his brother Charles, and I think his novel 
of ‘ Geoffry Hamlyn ’ one of the finest pieces of fiction ever 
composed. He gave himself at Oxford to athletics and social life 
— always being generous, manly, and of an inner temper nobler 
than his external manners. I wagered him £10 one day that he 
could not ‘ run a mile, row a mile, and trot a mile ’ within fifteen 
minutes ; yet he accomplished this remarkable feat : and as you 
know he was one of our very best scullers on the river : nay, I 
believe he won the Diamond Sculls at Henley. No more lovable 
or large-hearted fellow could be found, and always beneath his 
levity there lay that love of nature and that passion for honourable 
self- development which made him an Australian colonist, and gave 
the world his novels, and the Sydney Government a capital and 
fearless policeman. If he had lived his life out, literature would 
have been richer by many a good book, and England stronger by 
a loyal and patriotic man.” 

Henry Kingsley left college in 1853 without taking his degree, 
and, accompanied by two friends named Venables and Irvine, went 
to the Australian goldfields in search of fortune. It did not come, 
but that a great deal of , disaster came in its place is suggested 
by his reticence about the episode in after years. “ He never 
talked of his Australian experiences,” says his wife, “ although 

* ]\fr. John Cordy Jeaffreson devotes some pages of his “ Kecollec- 
tions ” to Henry Kingsley, but his notes are mere barren tittle-tattle. 
Kingsley apparently asked Jeaffreson to back a small bill — which he met,, 
it may be added — and once discussed with him his own personal appear- 
ance, implying that he feared he was ugly. But these are not the things 
which people usually print about the departed friends of their youth. 



SIE THOMAS MOEE’s TOMB IN CHELSEA CHUECH. 




la 





M: 



n 5JNVC<.v,,i^to ‘ "-"JP 

. '’ ' V • ^' ■' ' '.* ■ ■ ‘ * 

'‘ ' . s --v ^''71 


,s>r. 


V- # V '"- 
‘ '1. •: * • . 
KV-'j ' ’ \ ’ ' 

7 r 


' 7, 

S. ’:M t¥ * > 


^ V 


. ■ 


I r’^t*.' 


'i 'i ’’ '' 

^ ^ ^ ;_i 



t r . '♦ 


.iV 


V 





. ';^v :-' . 

r . *i| Y"* * 

t ** ' 

■ .-y ■«* ,-'."^3^^ . '3* '♦ , - 7 i- 

•. . f ^ ' , ■ ■ ; A 

•■L ' ~'i' ‘ ‘ ' •'^1 * ■- ’i' . 

^ ••• 

W •_ '■>. ' -MJWWlS- ‘ N ■■- 










HENRY KINGSLEY. 


xvii 


they can of necessity be picked up here and there throughout his 
novels.” For some little time he was in the mounted police, 
but, compelled by duty to attend an execution, he was so much 
affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust. During 
his absence in Australia his letters entirely ceased, and his name 
was never mentioned to his mother, who believed him dead. To 
this mother he gave unfaltering allegiance from childhood, and she 
returned it as only mothers can. “ Born in the West Indies, but 
brought up in England, she was,” says Charles Kingsley’s bio- 
grapher, ‘‘ a remarkable woman, full of poetry and enthusiasm.” 
Henry was, in a sense, the ne’er-do-weel of the family, sensitive, 
undisciplined, and lacking in self-reliance — in every respect the 
opposite of his brother Charles. 

Henry Kingsley afterwards explained the absence of letters by 
saying that he did not -write because he was unsuccessful and was 
rather ashamed of it. Later he continued silent because he 
dreaded to receive had news, and so year after year ran on until 
in 1858 he suddenly made his appearance in Chelsea. On 
the night of his return he walked up and down outside the rectory 
door for over an hour, fearing to enter lest he might hear that 
both his parents were dead. The house was actually tenanted by 
old Mr. Kingsley’s curate, among whose visitors was the young 
lady who afterwards became Henry’s wife. During these five 
years in Australia many things had happened. The old vicar had 
been eclipsed by his brilliant son. Charles had become Rector of 
Eversley, had published “ Hypatia ” and “ Westward Ho ! ” and 
was on the eve of a Royal chaplaincy and his first sermon at 
Buckingham Palace. The father and mother had taken a cottage 
about a mile from their son’s rectory. Henry took the adjoining 
cottage,* and, inspired, doubtlessly, by emulation of his brother, 
commenced his o-wn literary life. “ Geoffry Hamlyn ” was written 
in 1859, “ Ravenshoe ” in*1861, “Austin Elliot” in 1863. In 

* They phow you at Langywilly, Australia, the cottage in which 
“ Geoffry Hamlyn” was written, but I have the assurance of Mrs. Henry 
Kingsley that it was positively written at Eversley. Doubtless copious 
notes were made at Langywilly. 


XVlll 


HENEY KINGSLEY. 


1864 he married Miss Haselwood at St. Mary s Boltons, South 
Kensington, where the marriage ceremony was performed by his 
brother Charles and by the Kev. Gerald Blunt, the present Eector 
of Chelsea. For the next seven years the married pair lived at 



CHELSEA RECTORY FROM THE GARDEN. 


Wargrave, Henley-on-Thames, and herfe an active literary life was 
interrupted only by visits to London and some acquaintanceship 
with Fleet Street journalism of the Bohemian order. It may have 
been of this period that Mr. Joseph Hatton writes in tlie notes 
with which he has kindly favoured me. 


HENEY KINGSLEY. 


xix 

I was surprised,” he says, “on reading Mr. Cordy Jeaffre- 
son’s ‘ Book of Recollections ’ to find emphatic reference to Henry 
Kingsley’s ugliness. Jeafireson and he were at Oxford together, 
and Kingsley’s ugliness was so great that he was painfully con- 
scious of it. But it seems he needed only ‘ the proverbial five 
minutes for putting himself on equality with any personable 
youngster in a woman’s regard.’ I met Kingsley occasionally 
when he was fighting his way in literature and journalism in 
London ; once I remember when I was editing ‘ The Gentleman’s 
Magazine ’ over the Punch Offices in Bouverie Street. I recall 
his appearance as that of a bright-eyed, pleasant-looking • fellow, a 
trifle, I should say, under the medium height, sensitive face and 
manners, with an agreeable play of features and a ready tongue 
that left no impression on my mind of ugliness physical or mental. 

“He had in a comparatively small frame the carriage of an 
athlete, a light-weight champion, or a crack rider in an artillery 
regiment. At least, that is as I remember him ; and he took 
no pains to let me know that he had had an University education, 
nor did he talk about his famous brother Charles, nor in any way 
try to impress me with his importance socially or otherwise. He 
talked of his work and his hopes very modestly, and if it had 
fallen to my lot to meet him often, I think he was the kind of man 
I should have liked to he intimate with. It was a question of 
work which brought us together. I remember that in response 
to some slight hit of criticism, he remarked, ‘ My dear Mr. Hatton, 
you are the editor, I am the contributor, I leave myself entirely 
in your hands ; cut out anything you don’t like, if I don’t agree 
with you I shall restore the passages when I reprint the chapters.’ ” 

For the most sympathetic glimpse of Henry Kingsley that 
remains to us I am indebted to a private letter from Mrs. 
Thackeray Ritchie. 

“A great many years ago,” she writes, “I remember hearing 
Mrs. Kingsley, the Rector’s wife, at Chelsea Rectory, saying to 
my father, ‘ You know my son Charles, I should like you to know 
my son Henry too,’ and she took up some new hooks which were 
lying on the table and put them into my father’s hand. ‘ He also 


XX 


HENEY KINGSLEY. 



can write books,’ she said, smiling with motherly pride. She was 
not unlike her son Henry in expression. Her straight smile and 
bright dark eyes put me in mind of his as I think of it now. 
Indeed he could write books. He seemed to me to have lived his 
own books, battled them out, and forced them into their living 
shapes ; to have felt them and been them all ; writing not so 


much from imagination as from personal experience and struggle. 
I knew his books long before I knew him, specially ‘ Geotfry 
Hamlyn,’ which was written at Wargrave, and it was there that I 
first knew Henry Kingsley, a kind, most kind and hospitable 
host and friend. I lived for a time at Henley after my father’s 
death in a cottage by the river. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley were my 


HENRY Kingsley’s mother. 


HENKY KINGSLEY. 


XXI 


neighbours, and friendly neighbours indeed. I do not remember 
ever talking very much to Henry Kingsley, be was usually bard at 
work, but we used to go out in boats together, and meet at odd 
moments in gardens. He was perhaps more emphatic in conver- 
sation than I could comfortably respond to, but my feeling of 
respect and regard for him was very great, and my affectionate 
admiration warm and sincere. My brother-in-law, Leslie Stephen, 
was a great deal at ‘ Ivy Gate ’ — so our cottage was called — and 
bad a very great regard for him. We used to row over to the 
Kingsleys to the charming little cottage at Wargrave, where they 
were living, and where, among other interesting people, I remem- 
ber meeting Mr. Swinburne, who was also a neighbour. All sorts 
of fi'iendly greetings and gifts used to come forth from the little 
cottage, chief among which certain flaming gladioli still bloom in 
my remembrance. We had rabbits and a little dog, hut the 
Kingsleys had a garden full of flowers, cocks and hens, rabbits, 
and tall dogs, one special big friend, a collie, I think, whom they 
loved dearly. He used to come in at meal times and lay his long 
chin upon his master’s knee. ‘ We never send him away when he 
does this,’ Henry Kingsley used to say, caressing the faithful 
head. When my children’s dog comes now in the same way, and 
looks up in my face, I often send him away, but I always think ot 
Henry Kingsley as I do so, and feel how hard-hearted he would 
consider me. 

“ ‘ He is one of the kindest, the most chivalrous of men,’ an 
old friend of his used to say as we stood on the river banks dis- 
cussing our neighbours, and it was true if ever it was true of any- 
body. What the exact troubles were which fell upon that 
hospitable couple I do not know, but trouble came. Mrs. Kings- 
ley went north, Henry Kingsley went out as a war correspondent. 
Somewhere about 1870 I saw him again in Edinburgh ; he had 
come home for a few days only, to a furnished house, dark and 
shabby, and contrasting with sunny Wargrave. The place was 
full of boxes and packings. Mrs. Kingsley was anxious and 
troubled, though even then she took me in. I happened to be ill, 
and she sent for a lady doctor who cured me ; she also wrote to 


xzn < 


HENRY KINGSLEY. 


Dr. John Brown, my father’s old friend, who came to see me. I left 
them after a couple of days and went south, grateful for their kind- 
ness, but feeling as if I ought not to have imposed upon it. I 
only saw Henry Kingsley once again. It was two or three years 
after this time, that I travelled one day with Leslie Stephen, 
who had told me Henry Kingsley was very ill, and asked 
me to go with him to some place about an hour from London 
on the Brighton line. We walked from the station along 
a village road with trees on either side to a low sort of farm-house 
cottage where the Kingsleys were then staying. Mrs. Kingsley 
was lying dovui upstairs, he was alone to receive us in the latticed 
sitting-room. He was himself, and yet different from himself ; 
his eager manner was gone ; he was very gentle, but he seemed 
collected and cheerful only. ‘ They tell me I am going to die,’ 
he said ; ‘ I can’t believe it, I don’t feel like a dying man.’ He 
said this quite naturally, with a sort of simplicity and courage 
which were a part of all his life. He went on to talk of books 
and every-day things ; he seemed pleased that we should have 
come to see him, and made us ashamed by making so much of it. 
Very soon afterwards we heard that he was gone.” 

In 1869 Henry Kingsley went to Edinburgh to edit the Daily 
Review. That this was a mistake his friends readily acknowledged. 
His somewhat erratic life had scarcely fitted him for the editorial 
chair. Concentration, application, tact in dealing with one’s fellows 
— these are usually considered the qualifications for an editor. 
Kingsley possessed none of them, nor had he the literary faculty 
which makes a good journalist. “ I remember his leaders,” writes 
a friend of that time, “ dictatorial, self-complacent, egotistical, and 
ungrammatical.” And, strange as it may seem of so good a writer, 
it is true that the hypercritical may find occasional lapses in the 
English of Henry Kingsley’s best novels, and lapses more than 
occasional in his worst. The proprietors of his newspaper were 
thoroughly weary of him in a very little time, but it was not until 
the outbreak of the war of 1870 that the opportunity came for 
them and for him. He wished to serve as a war correspondent. 
The proposal was accepted, and he went first to Luxembourg, 


HENRY KINGSLEY. 


xxm 


was present at Sedan, and claimed to have been the first English- 
man to enter Metz. In 1872 he returned to London, where 
“ Valentin, a Story of Sedan,” was the direct outcome of his 
experiences. It is difficult to praise it, and indeed his work at 
this time seems to have shown a gradual deterioration. It would 
be impossible to conceive a worse novel written by a writer of 
distinction than “ The Grange Garden,” which he published in 
1875. It was his last effort. The collection of essays known as 
“ Fireside Studies,” which appeared in the same year, did little 
to enhance his reputation. And he was already at the beginning 
of his fatal illness. He removed with his wife to Cuckfield, in 
Sussex, and there he died in May, 1876. He was buried in 
Cuckfield churchyard. 


CHRONOLOGY. 


Henry Kingsley bom at Barnack ... ... ... Jan. 2, 1830 

Residence at Chelsea ... ... ... ... ... 1836 

Worcester College, Oxford ... ... ... 1850-53 

Life in Australia ... ... .. ... ... 1853-58 

“ Geoffry Hamlyn ” ... ... ... ... ... 1859 

“ Ravenshoe ” ... ... .. ... . . 1861 

“ Austin Elliot ” ... ... .. ... ... ... 1863 

Marriage and Removal to Wargrave ... ... ... 1864 

“ The Hillyars and the Burtons ’ ... ... ... 1865 

“ Leighton Court ” ... ... ... ... ... 1866 

“ Silcote of Silcotes ” .. ... ... ... ... 1867 

“ Mademoiselle Mathilde ” ... ... ... ... 1868 

“ Tales of Old Travel ” ... ... ... ... ... 1869 

“ Stretton ” ... ... . . . ... ... 1869 

War Correspondent ... .. . ... 1870-72 

“ Old Margaret ” ... ... .. ... .. ... 1871 

“Hetty” 1871 

“ The Lost Child ” ... ,. ... .. ... 1871 

“ The Boy in Grey ” 1871 

“Valentin” ... ... ... ... ... ... 1872 

“ Thornby Mills ”... ... ... ... ... ... 1872 

“ Oakeshott Castle ” ... .. • . ... ... 1873 

“ Reginald Hetheredge ”.. . ... ... ... ... 1874 

“ Number Seventeen ” , = . ., ... ... ... 1875 

Charles Kingsley died ... ... ... ... ... 1875 

“ The Harveys ” ... ... ... ... ... ... 1876 

“ Fireside Studies ” ... ... ... ... ... 1876 

“ The Grange Garden ” 1876 

Died May 24, 1876 

Buried in Cuckfield Churchyard ... ... ... May 29, 1876 

“ The Mystery of the Island ” 1877 

xxiv ■ 


CONTENTS. 


O 


Introductory . 


CHAPTER 1. ' 


CHAPTER II. 

THE COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE OF JOHN THORNTON, 
CLERK, AND THE BIRTH OF SOME ONE WHO TAKES 
RATHER A CONSPICUOUS PART IN OUR STORY 

CHAPTER HI. 

THE HISTORY OF (A CERTAIN FAMILY LIVING IN) EUROPE, 
FROM THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR TO THE PEACE 
OF 1818, CONTAINING FACTS HITHERTO UN- 
PUBLISHED . . . . 

« 

CHAPTER IV. 


SOME NEW FACES 


CHAPTER V. 

IN WHICH THE READER IS MADE ACCOMPLICE TO A 
MISPRISION OP FELONY . . . . 

CHAPTER VI. 

GEORGE HAWKER GOES TO THE PAIR — WRESTLES, BUT 
GETS THROWN ON HIS BACK — SHOOTS AT A MARK, 
BUT MISSES IT . 


PAGE 

1 

4 

6 

13 

21 

29 


XXV 


XXVI 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VII. 


PAOB 


MAJOR BUCKLEY GIVES HIS OPINION ON TROUT-FISHING, 

ON EMIGRATION, AND ON GEORGE HAWKER . 43 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE VICAR HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE . 51 


CHAPTER IX. 

WHEN THE KYE CAME HAME . . . ,62 

CHAPTER X. 

IN WHICH WE SEE A GOOD DEAL OP MISCHIEF BREWING 70 

CHAPTER XI. 

IN WHICH THE VICAR PREACHES A FAREWELL SERMON . 78 

V 

CHAPTER XII. 

IN WHICH A NEW FACE IS INTRODUCED, BY MEANS 

OF A RAT AND A TERRIER . . . .87 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE DISCOVERY . . . , , .94 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE major’s visit TO THE “ NAG’S-HEAD ” . . 107 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE BRIGHTON RACES, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEREAT 118 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE END OP Mary’s expedition . . . 125 

CHAPTER XVn. 


EXODUS 


139 


CONTENTS. xxvii 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE FIRST PUFF OF THE SOUTH WIND. . . 146 

CHAPTER XIX. 

I HIRE A NEW HORSEBREAKER .... 154 

CHAPTER XX. 

A WARM CHRISTMAS DAY .... 159 

CHAPTER XXI. 

JIM STOCKBRIDGE BEGINS TO TAKE ANOTHER VIEW OF 

MATTERS ...... 167 

CHAPTER XXII. 

SAM Buckley’s education .... 172 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

TOONARBIN . . . . . ' ■ 188 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

IN WHICH MARY HAWKER LOSES ONE OF HER OLDEST 

SWEETHEARTS ..... 197 


CHAPTER XXV. 

IN WHICH THE NEW DEAN OF B MAKES HIS APPEAR- 

ANCE, AND ASTONISHES THE MAJOR OUT OP HIS 
PROPRIETY ...... 210 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

WHITE HEATHENS ..... 220 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


THE GOLDEN VINEYARD 


235 


xxviii 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A GENTLEMAN FKOM THE WARS 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

SAM MEETS WITH A RIVAL, AND HOW HE TREATED HIM 

CHAPTER XXX. 

HOW THE CHILD WAS LOST, AND HOW HE GOT FOUND 

AGAIN WHAT CECIL SAID TO SAM WHEN THEY 

FOUND HIM — AND HOW IN CASTING LOTS, AL- 
THOUGH CECIL WON THE LOT, HE LOST THE PRIZE 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

HOW TOM TROUBRIDGE KEPT WATCH FOR THE FIRST 
TIME ...... 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

WHICH IS THE LAST CHAPTER BUT ONE IN THE SECOND 
VOLUME ...... 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

IN WHICH JAMES BRENTWOOD AND SAMUEL BUCKLEY, 
ESQUIRES, COMBINE TO DISTURB THE REST OF 
CAPTAIN BRENTWOOD, R.A., AND SUCCEED IN DOING 
SO . 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

HOW THEY ALL WENT HUNTING FOR SEA ANEMONES AT 
CAPE CHATHAM — AND HOW THE DOCTOR GOT A 
TERRIBLE FRIGHT — AND HOW CAPTAIN BLOCKSTROP 
SHOWED THAT THERE WAS GOOD REASON FOR IT . 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

A COUNCIL OF WAR . . . . . 


PAGB 

253 

267 

278 

289 

307 

311 

319 

336 


CONTENTS. 


XXIX 


CHAPTEK XXXVI. 

AN EARTHQUAKE, A COLLIERY EXPLOSION, AND AN 
ADVENTURE . . . . . 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

IN WHICH GEORGE HAWKER SETTLES AN OLD SCORE 
WITH WILLIAM LEE, MOST HANDSOMELY, LEAVING, 
IN FACT, A LARGE BALANCE IN HIS OWN FAVOUR 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

HOW DR. MULHAUS GOT BUSHED IN THE RANGES, AND 
WHAT BEFEL HIM THERE . . . . 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE LAST GLEAM BEFORE THE STORM . 

CHAPTER XL. 


THE STORM BURSTS 


CHAPTER XLI. 

WIDDERIN SHOWS CLEARLY THAT HE IS WORTH ALL 
THE MONEY SAM GAVE FOR HIM 

CHAPTER XLII. 

THE FIGHT AMONG THE FERN-TREES 

CHAPTER XLIII. 


ACROSS THE SNOW 


PAGE 

341 


361 


367 


377 


389 


391 


404 


414 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

HOW MARY HAWKER HEARD THE NEWS 


420 


XXX 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEE XLV. 

IN WHICH THEBE ABE SOME ASTONISHING BEVELATIONS 
WITH BEGABD TO DB. MULHAUS AND CAPTAIN 
DESBOBOUGH . c . . . 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

IN WHICH SAM MEETS WITH A SEBIOUS ACCIDENT, 
AND GETS CBIPPLED FOB LIFE 

CHAPTER XL VII. 

HOW MABY HAWKEB SAID “ YES ” 

CHAPTER XL VIII. 


PAGE 


435 


442 


447 


THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE 


453 


THE RECOLLECTIONS 


OF 

GEOFFRY HAMLYN, 


CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTOKY. 

Near the end of Fehruai’y, 1857, I think about the 20th or so, 
though it don’t much matter ; I only know it was near the latter 
end of summer, burning hot, with the bushfires raging like volcanoes 
on the ranges, and the river reduced to a slender stream of water, 
almost lost upon the byoad white flats of quartz shingle. It was 
the end of February, I said, when Major Buckley, Captain Brent- 
wood (formerly of the Artillery), and I, Geofifry Hamlyn, sat 
together over our wine in the veranda at Baroona, gazing sleepily 
on the grey plains that rolled away east and north-east towards 
the sea. 

We had sat silent for some time, too lazy to speak, almost to 
think. The beautiful flower-garden which lay before us, sloping 
towards the river, looked rather brown and sere, after the hot 
winds, although the orange-trees were still green enough, and vast 
clusters of purple grapes were ripening rapidly among the yellowing 
vine-leaves. On the whole, however, the garden was but a poor 
subject of contemplation for one who remembered it in all its full 
November beauty, and so my eye travelled away to the left, to a 
broad paddock of yellow grass which bounded the garden on that 
side, and there I watched an old horse feeding. 

A very old horse indeed, a horse which seemed to have reached 
the utmost bounds of equine existence. And yet such a beautiful 

2 


2 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


beast. Even as I looked some wild young colts were let out of 
the stock-yard, and came galloping and whinnying towards him, 
and then it was a sight to see the old fellow as he trotted towards 
them, with his nose in the air, and his tail arched, throwing his 
legs out before him with the ease and grace of a four-year-old, 
and making me regret that he wasn’t my property and ten years 
younger ; — altogether, even then, one of the finest horses of his 
class I had ever seen, and suddenly a thought came over me, and 
I grew animated. 

“ Major Buckley,” I said, “ what horse is that ? ” 

“ What horse is that ? ” repeated the major very slowly. “ Why, 
my good fellow, old Widderin, to De sure.” 

“ Bless me ! ” I said ; “ You don’t mean to say that that old 
horse is alive still ? ” 

“ He looks like it,” said the major. “ He’d carry you a mile 
or two yet.” 

“ I thought he had died while I was in England,” I said. “Ah, 
major, that horse’s history would be worth writing.” 

“ If you began,” answered the major, “ to write the history of 
the horse, you must write also the history of everybody who was 
concerned in those circumstances which caused Sam to take a 
certain famous ride upon him. And you would find that the 
history of the horse would be reduced into very small compass, 
and that the rest of your book would assume proportions too vast 
for the human intellect to grasp.” 

“ How so ? ” I said. 

He entered into certain details, which I will not give. 

“You would have,” he said, “to begin at the end of the last 
century, and bring one gradually on to the present time. Good 
heavens ! just consider.” 

“ I think you exaggerate,” I said. 

“ Not at all,” he answered. “ You must begin the histories of 
the Buckley and Thornton families in the last generation. 
The Brentwoods also, must not be omitted, — why there’s work for 
several years. What do you say, Brentwood ? ” 

“ The work of a life-time ; ” said the captain. 

“But suppose I were to write a simple narrative of the j^rin- 
cipal events in the histories of the three families, which no one is 
more able to do than myself, seeing that nothing important has 
ever happened without my hearing of it, — how, I say, would you 
like that?” 

“If it amused you to write it, I am sure it would amuse us to 
read it,” said the major. 

“ But you are rather old to turn author,” said Captain Brent- 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


3 


wood ; “ you’ll make a failure of it ; in fact, you’ll never get 
through with it.” 

I replied not, hut went into my bedroom, and returning with a 
thick roll of papers threw it on the floor — as on the stage the 
honest notary throws down the long-lost will, — and there I 
stood for a moment with my arms folded, eying Brentwood 
triumphantly. 

“It is already done, captain,” I said. “ There it lies.” 

The captain lit a cigar, and said nothing ; but the major said, 
“ Good gracious me ! and when was this done ? ” 

“ Partly here, and partly in England. I propose to read it 
aloud to you, if it will not bore you.” 

“A really excellent idea,” said the major. “ My dear ! ” — 
this last was addressed to a figure which was now seen ap- 
proaching us up a long vista of trellised vines. A tall figure 
dressed in grey. The figure, one could see as she came nearer, 
of a most beautiful old woman. 

Dressed I said in grey, with a white handkerchief pinned over 
her grey hair, and a light Indian shawl hanging from her shoulders. 
As upright as a dart, she came towards us through the burning 
heat, as calmly and majestically as if the temperature had been 
delightfully moderate. A hoary old magpie accompanied her, 
evidently of great age, and from time to time barked like an old 
bulldog, in a wheezy whisper. 

“ My dear,” said the major ; “ Hamlyn is going to read aloud 
some manuscript to us.” 

“ That wiU be very delightful, this hot weather,” said Mrs. 
Buckley. “ May I ask the subject, old friend ? ” 

“ I would rather you did not, my dear madam; you will soon 
discover, in spite of a change of names, and perhaps somewhat of 
localities.” 

“ Well, go on,” said the major ; and so on I went with the next 
chapter, which is the first of the story. ^ 

The reader will probably ask : 

“Now, who on earth is Major Buckley? and who is Captain 
Brentwood ? and last, not least, who the Dickens are you ? ” If 
you will have patience, my dear sir, you will find it all out in a 
very short time — Read on. 


4 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


CHAPTER II. 

THE COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE OF JOHN THORNTON, CLERK, AND 

THE BIRTH OF SOME ONE WHO TAKES RATHER A CONSPICUOUS 

PART IN OUR STORY. 

Sometime between the years 1780 and 1790, young John 
Thornton, then a Servitor at Christ Church, fell in love with 
pretty Jane Hickman, whose father was a well-to-do farmer, 
living not far down the river from Oxford and shortly before he 
took his degree, he called formally upon old Hickman, and asked 
his daughter’s hand. Hickman was secretly well pleased that his 
daughter should marry a scholar and a gentleman like John 
Thornton, and a man too who could knock over his bird, or kill his 
trout in the lasher with any one. So after some decent hesitation 
he told him, that as soon as he got a living, good enough to 
support Jane as she had been accustomed to live, he might take 
her home with a father’s blessing, and a hmidred pounds to buy 
furniture. And you may take my word for it, that there was not 
much difficulty with the young lady, for in fact the thing had long 
ago been an’anged between them, and she was anxiously waiting 
in the passage to hear her father’s decision, all the time that John 
was closeted with him. 

John came forth from the room well pleased and happy. And 
that evening when they two were walking together in the twilight 
by the quiet river, gathering cowslips and fritillaries, he told her 
of his good prospects, and how a young lord, who made much of 
him, and treated him as a friend and an equal, though he was but 
a Servitor — and was used to sit in his room talking with him long 
after the quadrangle was quiet, and the fast men had reeled off to 
their drunken slumbers — had only three days before promised him 
a living of 300/. a year, as soon as he should take his priest’s 
orders. And when they parted that night, at the old stile in the 
meadow, and he saw her go gliding home like a white phantom 
under the dark elms, he thought joyfully, that in two short years 
they would be happily settled, never more to part in this world, in 
his peaceful vicarage in Dorsetshire. 

Two short years, he thought. Alas ! and alas ! Before two 
years were gone, poor Lord Sandston was lymg one foggy 
November morning on Hampstead. Heath, with a bullet through 
his heart. Shot domi at the commencement of a noble and useful 
career by a brainless gambler — a man who did all things ill, save 
billiards and pistol-shooting ; his beauty and his strength hurried 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


5 


to corruption, and his wealth to the senseless debauchee who 
hounded on his murderer to insult him. But I have heard old 
Thornton tell, with proud tears, how my lord, though outraged 
and insulted, with no course open to him hut to give the villain 
the power of taking his life, still fired in the air, and went dovii 
to the vault of his forefathers without the guilt of blood upon his 
soul. 

So died Lord Sandston, and with him all John’s hopes of 
advancement. A curate now on 50Z. a year ; what hope had he 
of marrying ? And now the tearful couple, walking once more by 
the river in desolate autumn, among the flying yellow leaves, 
swore constancy, and agreed to wait till better times should 
come. 

So they waited. John in his parish among his poor people and 
his school-children, busy always during the day, and sometimes 
perhaps happy. But in the long winter evenings, when the snow 
lay piled against the door, and the wind howled in the chimney ; 
or worse, when the wind was stilf, and the rain was pattering from 
the eaves, he would sit lonely and miserable by his desolate 
hearth, and think with a sigh of what might have been had his 
patron lived. And five-and-twenty years rolled on until James 
Bromi, who was born during the first year of his curateship, 
came home a broken man, with one arm gone, from the battle of 
St. Vincent. And the great world roared on, and empires rose 
and fell, and dull echoes of the great throes without were heard 
in the peaceful English village, like distant thunder on a summer’s 
afternoon, but still no change for him. 

But poor Jane bides her time in the old farm-house, sitting con- 
stant and patient behind the long low latticed window, among the 
geraniums and roses, watching the old willows by the river. Five- 
and-twenty times she sees those willows grow green, and the 
meadow brighten up with flowers, and as often she sees their yellow 
leaves driven before the strong south wind, and the meadow grow 
dark and hoar before the breath of autumn. lier father was long 
since dead, and she was bringing up her brother’s children. Her 
raven hair was streaked with grey, and her step was not so light, 
nor her laugh so loud, yet still she waited and hoped, long after 
all hope seemed dead. 

But at length a brighter day seemed to da^vn for them ; for the 
bishop, who had watched for years John Thornton’s patient 
industry and blameless conversation, gave him, to his great joy 
and astonishment, the living of Drumston, worth 350/. a-year. 
And now, at last, he might marry if he would. True, the 
morning of his life was gone long since, and its hot noon spent in 


6 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


thankless labour ; but the evening, the sober, quiet evening, yet 
remained, and he and Jane might still render pleasant for one 
another the downward road toward the churchyard, and hand-in- 
hand walk more tranquilly forward to meet that dark tyrant 
Death, who seemed so terrible to the solitary watcher. 

A month or less after John was installed, one soft grey day in 
March, this patient couple walked slowly arm-in-arm up the hill, 
under the lychgate, past the dark yew that shadowed the peaceful 
graves, and so through the damp church porch, up to the old stone 
altar, and there were quietly married, and then walked home 
again. No feasting or rejoicing was there at that wedding ; the 
very realisation of their long deferred hopes was a disappointment. 
In March they were married, and before the lanes grew bright 
with the primroses of another spring, poor Jane was lying in a 
new-made grave, in the shadow of the old grey tower. 

But, though dead, she yet lived to him in the person of a bright- 
eyed baby, a little girl, born but three months before her mother’s 
death. Who can tell how John watched and prayed over that 
infant, or how he felt that there was something left for him in this 
world yet, and thought that if his child would live, he should not 
go down to the grave a lonely desolate man. Poor John ! — who 
can say whether it would not have been better if the mother’s 
coffin had been made a little larger, and the baby had been canned 
up the hill, to sleep quietly with its mother, safe from all the evil 
of this world. 

But the child lived and grew, and, at seventeen, I remember her 
well, a beautiful girl, merry, impetuous, and thoughtless, with 
black waving hair and dark blue eyes, and all the village loved her 
and took pride in her. For they said — “ She is the handsomest 
and the best in the parish.” 


CHAPTER III. 

THE HISTOKY OF (a CERTAIN FAMILY LIVING In) EUROPE, FROM 
THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR TO THE PEACE OF 1818 , CONTAINING 
FACTS HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED. 

Among all the great old commoner families of the south of England, 
who have held the lands of their forefathers through every change 
of djTiasty and religion, the Buckleys of Clere stand deservedly 
high among the brightest and the oldest. All down the stormy 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


7 


page of this great island’s history one sees, once in about a 
hundred years, that name in some place of second-rate honour at 
least, whether as admiral, general, or statesman ; and yet, at the 
beginning of this present century, the representative of the good 
old family was living at Clere House, a palace built in the golden 
times of Elizabeth, on 900/. a-year, while all the county knew 
that it took 300/. to keep Clere in proper repair. 

The two Stuart revolutions had brought them dowm from county 
princes to simple wealthy squires, and the frantic efforts made by 
Godfrey Buckley, in the “South Sea” scheme to retrieve the 
family fortunes, had well nigh broke them. Year by year they 
saw acre after acre of the broad lands depart, and yet Marmaduke 
Buckley lived in the home of his ancestors, and the avenue was 
untouched by axe or saw. 

He was a widower, with two sons, John and James. John had 
been to sea from his earliest youth, and James had joined his 
regiment a year or more. John had been doing the state good 
service under his beloved Collingwood ; and on the 19th October, 
1805, when Nelson and Collingwood made tryst to meet at the 
gates of hell, John Buckley was one of the immortals on the deck 
of the “ Royal Sovereign.” And when the war fog rolled away to 
leeward, and Trafalgar was won, and all seas were free, he lay 
dead in the cockpit, having lived just long enough to comprehend 
the magnitude of the victory. 

Brave old Marmaduke was walking up and down the terrace at 
Clere uneasy and impatient. Beside him was the good old curate 
who had educated both the boys, and wearily and oft they turned to 
watch do’wn the long vista of the ancient avenue for the groom, who 
had been despatched to Portsmouth to gain some tidings of the 
lieutenant. They had heard of the victory, and, in their simple 
way, had praised God for it, drinking a bottle of the rarest old 
wine to his Majesty’s health and the confusion of his enemies, 
before they knew whether they themselves were among the number 
of the mourners. And now, as they paced the terrace, every 
moment they grew more anxious and uneasy for the long delayed 
intelligence. 

Some trifle took them into the flower-garden, and, when they 
came back, their hearts leapt up, for the messenger was there dis- 
mounted, opening the gate. The curate ran down the steps, and 
taking a black- edged letter from the sorrowful groom, gave it into 
the trembling hands of the old man with a choking sob. He 
opened it and glanced over it, and then, throwing it towards his 
friend, walked steadily up the steps, and disappeared within the 
dark porch. 


8 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OE 


It was just three hasty lines from the great Collingwood himself. 
That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found 
time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his 
boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted him like a son. 

The old man sat that evening in the western gallery, tearless 
and alone, brooding over his grief. Three times the curate had 
peeped in, and as often had retreated, fearful of disturbing the 
old man’s solemn sorrow. The autumn sun had gone dovia in 
wild and lurid clouds, and the gallery was growing dark and 
gloomy, when the white figure of a beautiful girl entering silently 
at the lower door came gliding up the darkening vista, past the 
light of the windows and the shadow of the piers, to where the 
old man sat under the high north window, and knelt at his feet, 
weeping bitterly. 

It was Agnes Talbot, the daughter of his nearest neighbour and 
best friend, whom the curate had slily sent for, thinking in his 
honest heart that she would make a better comforter than he, and 
rightly ; for the old man, bending over her, lifted up his voice and 
wept, speaking for the first time since he heard of his bereavement, 
and saying, “ Oh, my boy, my boy ! ” 

“He is gone, sir,” said Agnes, through her tears ; “ and gone 
the way a man should go. But there is another left you yet ; 
remember him.” 

“Aye, James,” said he; “alas, poor James! I wonder if he 
knows it. I wish he were here.” 

“ James is here,” said she. “ He heard of it before you, and 
came posting over as fast as he could, and is waiting outside to 
know if you can see him.” 

The door at the lower end of the gallery opened, and a tall and 
noble-looking young man strode up and took his father’s hand. 

He was above the ordinary height of man, with a grand broad 
forehead and bold blue eyes. Old Marmaduke’s heart warmed up 
as he parted his curling hair, and he said, 

“ Thank God, I’ve got one left still ! The old house will not 
perish yet, while such a one as you remains to uphold it.” 

After a time they left him, at his own request, and walked out 
together through the dark rooms towards the old hall. 

“Agnes, my beloved, my darling!” said James, drawing his 
arm round her waist ; “I knew I should find you with him like a 
ministering angel. Say something to comfort me, my love. You 
never could love John as I did ; yet I know you felt for him as 
your brother, as he soon would have been, if he had lived.” 

“ What can I say to you, my own ? ” she replied, “ save to tell 
you that he fell as your brother should fall, amongst the foremost. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


9 


fighting for his country’s existence. And, James, if you must go 
before me, and leave me a widow before I am a bride, it would 
render more tolerable the short time that would be left me before 
I followed you, to think that you had fallen like him.” 

“ There will be a chance of it, Agnes,” said James, “ for Stuart, 
they say, is going to Italy, and I go with him. There will be a 
long and bloody war, and who knows how it will end ? Stay you 
here quiet with the old man, my love, and pray for me ; the end 
will come some day. I am only eighteen and an ensign ; in ten 
years I may be a colonel.” 

They parted that night with tears and kisses, and a few days 
afterwards James went from among them to join his regiment. 

From that time Agnes almost lived with old Marmaduke. Her 
father’s castle could be seen over the trees from the windows of 
Clere, and every morning, wet or dry, the old man posted himself 
in the great north window of the gallery to watch her coming. All 
day she would pervade the gloomy old mansion like a ray of sun- 
light, now reading to him, now leading him into the flower-garden 
in fine weather, till he grew quite fond of flowers for her sake, and 
began even to learn the names of some of them. But oftenest of 
all she would sit working by his side, while he told her stories of 
times gone by, stories which would have been dull to any but her, 
but which she could listen to and applaud. Best of all she liked 
to hear him talk of James, and his exploits by flood and field from 
his youth up ; and so it was that this quiet couple never tired one 
another, for their hearts were set upon the same object. 

Sometimes her two sisters, noble and beautiful girls, would come 
to see him ; but they, indeed, were rather intruders, kind and good 
as they were. And sometimes old Talbot looked round to see his 
old friend, and talked of bygone fishing and hunting, which roused 
the old man up and made him look glad for half a day after. 
StiU, however, Agnes and the venerable curate were company 
enough for him, for they were the only two who loved his absent 
son as well as he. The love which had been divided between the 
two, seemed now to be concentrated upon the one, and yet this 
true old Briton never hinted at James’ selling out and coming 
home, for he said that the country had need of every one then, 
more particularly such a one as James. 

Time went on, and he came back to them from Corunna, and 
spending little more than a month at home, he started away once 
more ; and next they heard of him at Busaco, wounded and pro- 
moted. Then they followed him in their hearts along the path of 
glory, from Talavera by Albuera and Vittoria, across the Pyrenees. 
And while they were yet reading a long-delayed letter, written 


10 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


from Toulouse at midnight — after having been to the theatre with 
Lord Wellington, wearing a white cockade— he broke in on them 
again, to tell them the war was Avell-nigh over, and that he would 
soon come and live with them in peace. 

Then what delightful reunions were there in the old gallery 
window, going over all the weary campaigns once more ; pleasant 
rambles, too, down by the river-side in the sweet May evenings, 
old Marmaduke and the curate discreetly walking in front, and 
James and Agnes loitering far behind. And in the succeeding 
winter after they were married, what pleasant rides had they to 
meet the hounds, and merry evenings before the bright wood-fire 
in the hall. Never were four people more happy than they. The 
war was done, the disturber was confined, and peace had settled 
down upon the earth. 

Peace, yes. But not for long. Spring came on, and with it 
strange disquieting rumours, growing more certain day by day, 
till the terrible news broke on them that the faithless tyrant had 
broke loose again, and that all Europe was to be bathed in blood 
once more by his insane ambition. 

James had sold out of the army, so that when Agnes first 
heard the intelligence she thanked God that her husband at least 
would be safe at home during the stonn. But she was soon to be 
undeceived. When the news first came, James had galloped off 
to Portsmouth, and late in the evening they saw him come riding 
slowly and sadly up the avenue. She was down at the gate 
before he could dismount, and to her eager inquiries if the news 
were true, he replied, 

“ All too true, my love ; and I must leave you this day 
week.” 

“ My God ! ” said she ; “ leave me again, and not six months 
married ? Surely the king has had you long enough ; may not 
your wife have you for a few short months ? ” 

“ Listen to me, dear wife,” he replied. “All the Peninsular 
men are volunteering, and I must not be among the last, for every 
man is wanted now. Buonaparte is joined by the whole army, 
and the craven king has fled. If England and Prussia can com- 
bine to strike a blow before he gets head, thousands and hundreds 
of thousands of lives will be spared. But let him once get firmly 
seated, and then, hey ! for ten years’ more war. Beside the 
thing is done ; my name went in this morning.” 

She said, “ God’s will be done ; ” and he left his young bride 
and his old father once again. The nightingale grew melodious 
in the midnight woods, the swallows nestled again in the chimneys, 
and day by day the shadows under the old avenue grew darker 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


11 


and darker till merry June was half gone ; and then one Saturday 
came the rumour of a great defeat. 

All the long weary summer Sabbath that followed, Agnes and 
Marmaduke silently paced the terrace, till the curate — having got 
through his own services somehow, and broken down in the 
“prayer during war and tumults,” — came hurrying back to them 
to give what comfort he could. 

Alas ! that was but little. He could only speculate whether or 
not the duke would give up Brussels, and retire for reinforcements. 
If the two armies could effect a union, they would be near about 
the strength of the French, but then the Prussians were cut to 
pieces ; so the curate broke down, and became the worst of the three. 

Cheer up, good souls ! for he you love shall not die yet for 
many long years. While you are standing there before the porch, 
dreading the long anxious night, Waterloo has been won, and he 
— having stood the appointed time in the serried square, watching 
the angry waves of French cavalry dash in vain against the glitter- 
ing wall of bayonets — is now leaning against a gun in the French 
position, alive and well, though fearfully tired, listening to the 
thunder of the Prussian artillery to the north, and watching the 
red sun go down across the wild confusion of the battle-field. 

But home at Clere none slept that night, but met again next 
morning weary and harassed. All the long three days none of 
them spoke much, but wandered about the house uneasily. About 
ten o’clock on the Wednesday night they went to bed, and the old 
man slept from sheer weariness. 

It was twelve o’clock when there came a clang at the gate, and 
a sound of horses’ feet on the gravel. Agnes was at the window 
in a moment. 

“ Who goes there?” she cried. 

“An orderly from Colonel Mountford at Portsmouth,” said a 
voice below. “ A letter for Mr. Buckley.” 

She sent a servant to undo the door ; and going to the window 
again, she inquired, trembling, — 

“ Do you know what the news is, orderly ? ” 

“A great victory, my dear,” said the man, mistaking her for 
one of the servants. “ Your master is all right. There’s a letter 
from him inside this one.” 

“And I daresay,” Mrs. Buckley used to add, when she would 
tell this old Waterloo story, as we called it, “that the orderly 
thought me a most heartless domestic, for when I heard what he 
said, I burst out laughing so loud, that old Mr. Buckley woke up 
to see what was the matter, and when heard, he laughed as loud 
as I did.” 


12 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


So he came back to them again with fresh laurels, but Agnes 
never felt safe, till she heard that the powers had determined to 
chain up her hete noir, Buonaparte, on a lonely rock in the Atlantic, 
tliat he might disturb the world no more. Then at last she began 
to believe tliat peace might be a reality, and a few months after 
Waterloo, to their delight and exultation, she bore a noble boy. 

And as we shall see more of this boy, probably, than of any one 
else in these following pages, we will, if you please, appoint him 
hero, with all the honours and emoluments thereunto pertaining. 
Perhaps when I have finished, you will think him not so much of 
a hero after all. But at all events you shall see that he is an 
honest upright gentleman, and in these times, perhaps such a 
character is preferable to a hero. 

Old Marmaduke had been long failing, and two years after this 
he had taken to his bed, never to leave it again alive. And one 
day when the son and heir was rolling and crowing on his grand- 
father’s bed, and Agnes was sewing at the window, and Janies was 
tying a fly by the bedside, under the old man’s directions, he 
suddenly drew the child towards him, and beckoning Agnes from 
the window, spoke thus : — 

“My children, I shan’t be long with you, and I must be the 
last of the Buckleys that die at Clere. Nay, I mean it, James ; 
listen carefully to me : when I go, the house and park must go 
with me. We are very poor as you well know, and you will be 
doing injustice to this boy if you hang on here in this useless 
tumble-down old palace, without money enough to keep up your 
position in the county. You are still young, and it would be hard 
for you to break up old associations. It got too hard for me 
lately, though at one time I meant to do it. The land and the 
house are the worst investment you can have for your money, and 
if you sell, a man like you may make money in many ways. 
Gordon the brewer is dying to have the place, and he has more 
right to it than we have, for he has ten acres round to our one. 
Let him have the estate and found a new family ; the people will 
miss us at first, God bless ’em, but they’ll soon get used to 
Gordon, for he’s a kindly man, and a just, and I am glad that we 
shall have so good a successor. Kemember your family and your 
ancestors, and for that reason don’t hang on here, as I said before, 
in the false position of an old county family without money, like 
the Singletons of Hurst, living in a ruined hall, with a miserable 
overcropped farm, a corner of the old deer park, under their draw- 
ing-room window. No, my boy, I would sooner see you take a 
farm from my lord, than that. And now I am tired with talking, 
and so leave me, but after I am gone, remember what I have said.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


13 


A few days after this the old man passed peacefully from the 
world without a sigh. 

They buried him in the family vault under the chancel windows, 
and he was the last of the Buckleys that slept in the grave of his 
forefathers. The old arch beneath the east window is built up 
for ever. 

Soon after he was gone, the Major, as I shall call him in future, 
sold the house and park, and the few farms that were left, and 
found himself with twelve thousand pounds, ready to begin the 
world again. He funded his money and made up his mind to 
wait a few years and see what to do ; determining that if no other 
course should open, he would emigrate to Canada — the paradise 
of half-pay officers. But in the meantime he moved into Devon- 
shire, and took a pretty little cottage which was to let, not a 
quarter of a mile from Drumston Vicarage. 

Such an addition to John Thornton’s little circle of acquaintances 
was very welcome. The Major and he very soon became fast 
friends, and noble Mrs. Buckley was seldom a day without spend- 
ing an hour at least, with the beautiful, wilful Mary Thornton. 


CHAPTER IV. 

SOME NEW FACES. 

The twilight of a winter’s evening, succeeding a short and stormy 
day, was fast fading into night, and old John Thornton sat dozing 
in his chair before the fire, waiting for candles to resume his read- 
ing. He was now but little over sixty, yet his hair was snowy 
white, and his face looked worn and aged. My one who watched 
his countenance now in the light of the blazing wood, might see 
by the down-drawn brows and uneasy expression that the old man 
was unhappy and disquieted. 

The book that lay in his lap was a volume of Shakespeare, open 
at the “ Merchant of Venice.” Something he had come across in 
that play had set him thinking. The book had fallen on his 
knees, and he sat pondering till he had fallen asleep.^ Yet even 
in his slumber the uneasy expression stayed upon his face, and 
now and then he moved uneasily in his chair. 

What could there be to vex him ? Not poverty at all events, 
for not a year ago a relation, whom he had seldom seen, and of 
late years entirely lost sight of, had left him 5,000^. and a like 


14 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


sum to his daughter Mary. And his sister, Miss Thornton, a 
quiet, good old maid, who had been a governess all her life, had 
come to live with him, so that he was now comfortably off, with 
the only two relations he cared about in the world staying with 
him to make his old age comfortable. Yet notwithstanding all 
this, John was unhappy. 

His daughter Mary sat sewing in the window, ostensibly for the 
purpose of using the last of the daylight. But the piece of white 
muslin in her hand claimed but a small part of her attention. 
Sometimes she gave a stitch or two ; but then followed a long 
gaze out of the window, across the damp gravel and plushy lawn, 
towards the white gate under the leafless larches. Again with an 
impatient sigh she would address herself to her sewing, hut once 
more her attention would wander to the darkening garden ; so at 
length she rose, and leaning against the window, began to watch 
the white gate once more. 

But now she starts, and her face brightens up, as the gate 
swings on its hinges, and a tall man comes with rapid eager step 
up the walk. John moves uneasily in his sleep, but unnoticed by 
her, for she stands back in the shadow of the curtain, and eagerly 
watches the new comer in his approach. Her father sits up in 
his chair, and after looking sadly at her for a moment, then sinks 
hack with a sigh, as though he would wish to go to sleep again 
and wake no more. 

The maid, bringing in candles, met the new comer at the door, 
and, carrying in the lights before him, announced — 

“ Mr. George Hawker.” 

I remember his face indistinctly as it was then. I remember it 
far better as it was twenty years after. Yet I must try to recall 
it for you as well as I can, for we shall have much to do with this 
man before the end. As the light from the candles fell upon his 
figure while he stood in the doorway, any man or woman who saw 
it would have exclaimed immediately, “ What a handsome fellow ! ” 
and with justice ; for if perfectly regular features, splendid red 
and brown complexion, faultless white teeth, and the finest head 
of curling black hair I ever saw, could make him handsome, hand- 
some he was without doubt. And yet the more you looked at 
him the less you liked him, and the more inclined you felt to 
pick a quarrel with him. The thin lips, the everlasting smile, the 
quick suspicious glance, so rapidly shot out from under the over- 
hanging eyebrows, and as quickly withdrawn, were fearfully repul- 
sive, as well as a trick he had of always clearing his throat before 
he spoke, as if to gain time to frame a lie. But, perhaps, the 
strangest thing about him wa;S the shape of his head, which, I 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


15 


believe, a child would have observed. The young fellows in those 
times knew little enough about phrenology. I doubt, indeed, if I 
had ever heard the word, and yet among the village lads that man 
went by the name of “ flat-headed George.” The forehead was 
both low and narrow, sloping a great way back, while the larger 
part of the skull lay low down behind the ears. All this was 
made the more visible by the short curling hair which covered his 
head. 

He was the only son of a small farmer, in one of the distant 
outlying hamlets of Drumston, called Woodlands. His mother 
had died when he was very young, and he had had but little 
education, but had lived shut up with his father in the lonely old 
farm-house. And strange stories were in circulation among the 
villages about that house, not much to the credit of either father 
or son, which stories John Thornton must in his position as clergy- 
man have heard somewhat of, so that one need hardly wonder at 
his uneasiness when he saw him enter. 

For Mary adored him ; the rest of the village disliked and dis- 
trusted him ; but she, with a strange perversity, loved him as it 
seldom falls to the lot of man to be loved — with her whole heart 
and soul. 

‘‘ I have brought you some snipes, Mr. Thornton,” said he, in 
his most musical tone's. “ The white frost last night has sent 
them down off' the moor as thick as bees, and this warm rain will 
soon send them all hack again. I only went round through Fern- 
worthy and Combe, and I have killed five couple.” 

“ Thank you, Mr. George, thank you,” said John, “ they are 
not so plentiful as they were in old times, and I don’t shoot so 
well either as I used to do. My sight’s going, and I can’t walk 
far. It is nearly time for me to go, I think.” 

“ Not yet, sir, I hope ; not yet for a long time,” said George 
Hawker, in an offhand sort of way. But Mary slipped round, 
kissed his forehead, and took his hand quietly in hers. 

John looked from her to George, and dropped her hand with a 
sigh, and soon the lovers were whispering together again in the 
darkness of the window. 

But now there is a fresh footfall on the garden walk, a quick, 
rapid, decided one. Somebody bursts open the hall-door, and, 
without shutting it, dashes into the parlour, accompanied by a 
tornado of damp air, and announces in a loud, though not unplea- 
sant voice, with a foreign accent — 

“I have got the new Scolopax.” 

He was a broad, massive built man, about the middle height, 
with a square determined set of features, brightened up by a pair 


16 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


of merry blue eyes. His forehead was, I think, the finest I ever 
saw ; so high, so broad, and so upright ; and altogether he was 
the sort of man that in a city one would turn round and look after, 
wondering who he was. 

He stood in the doorway, dripping, and without “ Good-even,” 
or salutation of any sort, exclaimed — 

“ I have got the new Scolopax ! ” 

“ No ! ” cried old John, starting up all alive, “ Have you 
though ? How did you get him ? Are you sure it is not a young 
Jack ? Come in and tell us all about it. Only think.” 

“ The obstinacy and incredulity of you English,” replied the 
new comer, totally disregarding John’s exclamations, and remain- 
ing dripping in the doorway, “ far exceeds anything I could have 
conceived, if I had not witnessed it. If I told you once, I told 
you twenty times, that I had seen the bird on three distinct 
occasions in the meadow below Reel’s mill ; and you each time 
threw your jacksnipe theory in my face. To-day I marked him 
down in the bare ground outside Haveldon wood, then ran at full 
speed up to the jager, and offered him five shillings if he would 
come down and shoot the bird I showed him. He came, killed 
the bird in a style that I would give a year’s tobacco to be master 
of, and remarked as I paid him nis money, that he would like to 
get five shillings for every one of those birds he could shoot in 
summer time. The jolter-head thought it was a sandpiper, but he 
wasn’t much farther out than you with your jacksnipes. Bah ! ” 

“ My dear Doctor Mulhaus,” said John mildly, “ I confess 
myself to have been foolishly incredulous, as to our little place 
being honoured by such a distinguished stranger as the new snipe. 
But come in to the fire, and smoke your pipe, while you show me 
your treasure. Mary, you know, likes tobacco, and Mr. George, 
I am sure,” he added, in a slightly altered tone, “ will excuse 
it.” 

Mr. George would be charmed. But the Doctor, standing 
staring at him open-eyed for a moment, demanded in an audible 
whisper — 

“ Who the deuce is that ? ” 

“ Mr. George Hawker, Doctor, from the Woodlands. I should 
have thought you had met him before.” 

“ Never,” replied the Doctor. “And I don’t — and I mean I 
have had the honour of hearing of him from Stockbridge. Excuse 
me, sir, a moment. I am going to take a liberty. I am a 
phrenologist.” He advanced across the room to where George 
sat, laid his hand on his forehead, and drawing it lightly and 
slowly back through his black cmis, till he reaQhed the uape of his 


GEOFFEY HAIMLYN. 


17 


neck, ejaculated a “ Hah ! ” whicli might mean anything, and 
retired to the tire. 

He then began filling his pipe, but before it was filled set it 
suddenly on the table, and drawing from his coat-pocket a card- 
board box, exhibited to the delighted eyes of the vicar that beau- 
tiful little browm-mottled snipe, which now bears the name of 
Colonel Sabine, and having lit his pipe, set to work with a tiny 
penknife, and a pot of arsenical soap, all of which were dis- 
interred from the vast coat-pocket before mentioned, to reduce 
the plump little bird to a loose mass of skin and feathers, fit to 
begin again his new life in death in a glass-case in some collec- 
tor’s museum. 

George Hawker had sat very uneasy since the Doctor’s phreno- 
logical examination, and every now and then cast fierce angry 
glances at him from under his lowered eyebrows, talking but little 
to Mary. But now he grows more uneasy still, for the gate goes 
again, and still another footfall is heard approaching through the 
darkness. 

That is James Stockbridge. I should know that step among a 
thousand. Whether brushing through the long grass of an 
English meadow in May time, or quietly pacing up and down the 
orange alley in the New World, between the crimson snow and 
the blazing west ; or treading lightly across the wet ground at 
black midnight, when the cattle are restless, or the blacks are 
abroad ; or even, I should think, staggering on the slippery deck, 
when the big grey seas are booming past, and the good ship seems 
plunging down to destruction. 

He had loved Mary dearly since she was almost a child ; but 
she, poor pretty fool, used to turn him to ridicule, and make him 
fetch and carry for her like a dog. He was handsomer, cleverer, 
stronger, and better tempered than George Hawker, and yet she 
had no eyes for him, or his good qualities. She liked him in a 
sort of way ; nay, it might even be said that she was fond of him. 
But what she liked better than him was to gratify her vanity, by 
showing her power over the finest young fellow in the village, and 
to use him as a foil to aggravate George Hawker. My aunt Betsy 
(spinster) used to say, that if she were a man, sooner than stand 
that hussy’s airs (meaning Mary’s) in the way young Stockbridge 
did, she’d cut and run to America, which, in the old lady’s esti- 
mation, was the last resource left to an unfortunate human 
creature, before suicide. 

As he entered the parlour, John’s face grew bright, and he held 
out his hand to him. The Doctor, too, shoving his spectacles on 
his forehead, greeted him with a royal salute, of about twenty-one 

3 


18 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


short words ; but he got rather a cool reception from the lovers in 
the window. Mary gave him a quiet good evening, and George 
hoped with a sneer that he was quite well, but directly the pair 
were whispering together once more in the shadow of the curtain. 

So he sat down between the Doctor and the Vicar. James, 
like all the rest of us, had a profound respect for the Doctor’s 
learning, and old John and he were as father and son ; so a 
better matched trio could hardly be found in the parish, as they 
sat there before the cheerful blaze, smoking their pipes. 

“ A good rain, Jim ; a good, warm, kindly rain after the frost,” 
began the Vicar. 

“ A very good rain, sir,” replied Jim.. 

“ Some idiots,” said the Doctor, “ take the wing bones out first. 
Now, my method of beginning at the legs and working forward, is 
infinitely superior. Yet that ass at Crediton, after I had con- 
descended to show him, persisted his own way was the best.” All 
this time he was busy skinning his bird. 

“ How are your Southdowns looking, Jim ? ” says the Vicar. 

Foot-rot, eh ? 

“ Well, yes, sir,” says James, “ they always will, you know, 
in these wet clays. But I prefer ’em to the Leicesters, for all 
that.” 

“ How is scapegrace Hamlyn ? ” asked the Vicar. 

“ He is very well, sir. He and I have been out with the 
harriers to-day.” 

“Ah ! taking you out with the harriers instead of minding his 
business ; just like him. He’ll be leading you astray, James, my 
boy. Young men like you and he, who have come to be their 
own masters so young, ought to be more careful than others. 
Besides, you see, both you and Hamlyn, being ’squires, have got 
an example to set to the poorer folks.” 

“We are neither of us so rich as. some of the farmers, sir.” 

“ No ; but you are both gentlemen bom, you see, and, there- 
fore, ought to be in some way models for those who are not.” 

“ Bosh,” said the Doctor. “ All this about Hamlyn’s going 
out hare-hunting.” 

“ I don’t mind it once a week,” said the Vicar, ignoring the 
Doctor’s interruption ; “ hui four times is rather too much. And 
Hamlyn has been out four days this week. Twice with Wrefords, 
and twice with Holes. He can’t deny it.” 

Jim couldn’t, so he laughed. “ You must catch him, sir,” be 
said, “ and give him a real good wigging. He’ll mind you. 
But catch him soon, sir, or you won’t get the chance. Doctor, do 
you know anything about New South Wales ? ” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


19 


“ Botany Bay,” said the Vicar abstractedly, “ convict settle- 
ment in South Seas. Jerry Shaw begged the Judge to hang him 
instead of sending him there. Judge wouldn’t do it though ; 
Jerry was too had for that.” 

“ Hamlyn and I are thinking of selling up and going there,” 
said Jim. “ Do you know anything about it. Doctor ? ” 

“ What ! ” said the Doctor ; “ the mysterious hidden land of 
the great South Sea. Tasman’s land, Nuyt’s land, Leuwin’s 
land, De Witt s land, any fool’s land who could sail round, and 
never have the sense to land and make use of it — the new country 
of Australasia. The land with millions of acres of fertile soil, 
under a splendid climate, calling aloud for some one to come and 
cultivate them. The land of the Eucalypti and the Marsupials, 
the land of deep forests and boundless pastures, which go rolling 
away westward, plain beyond plain, to none knows where. Yes ; 
I know something about it.” 

The Vicar was “ knocked all of a heap ” at James’s announce- 
ment, and now, slightly recovering himself, said — 

“ You hear him. He is going to Botany Bay. He is going 
to sell his estate, 250 acres of the best land in Devon, and go 
and live among the convicts. And who is going with him ? 
Why, Hamlyn the wise. Oh dear me. And what is he going 
for ? ” 

That was a question apparently hard to answer. If there was a 
reason, Jim was either unwilling or unable to give it. Yet I think 
that the real cause was standing there in the window, with a look 
of unbounded astonishment on her pretty face. 

“ Going to leave us, James ! ” she cried, coming quickly towards 
him. “ Why, whatever shall I do without you ? ” 

“ Yes, Miss Mary,” said James somewhat huskily ; “I think I 
may say that we have settled to go. Hamlyn has got a letter 
from a cousin of his who went from down Plymouth way, and who 
is making a fortune ; and besides, I have got tired of the old place 
somehow, lately. I have nothing to keep me here now, and there 
will be a change, and a new life there. In short,” said he, in 
despair of giving a rational reason, “ I have made up my mind.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Mary, while her eyes filled with tears, “ I shall 
be so sorry to lose you.” 

“ I too,” said James, “ shall be sorry to start away beyond seas 
and leave all the friends I care about save one behind me. But 
times are hard for the poor folks here now, and if I, as ’squire, 
set the example of going, I know many will foUow. The old 
country, Mr. Thornton,” he continued, “ is getting too crowded 
tor men to live in without a hard push, and depend on it, when 


20 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


poor men are afraid to marry for fear of having children which 
they can’t support, it is time to move somewhere. The hive is 
too hot, and the bees must swarm, so that those that go will 
both better themselves, and better those they leave behind them, 
by giving them more room to work and succeed. It’s hard to part 
with the old farm and the old faces now, but perhaps in a few 
years, one will get to like that country just as one does this, from 
being used to it, and the old country will seem only like a pleasant 
dream after one has awoke.” 

“ Think twice about it, James, my boy,” said the Vicar. 

“ Don’t be such an ass as to hesitate,” said the Doctor impa- 
tiently. “It is the genius of your restless discontented nation to 
go blundering about the world like buffaloes in search of fresh 
pasture. You have founded already two or three grand new 
empires, and you are now going to form another ; and men like 
you ought to have their fingers in the pie.” 

“Well, God speed you, and Hamlyn too, wherever you go. 
Are you going home, Mr. Hawker ? ” 

George, who hated James from the very bottom of his heart, 
was not ill-pleased to hear there would be a chance of soon getting 
rid of him. He had been always half jealous of him, though 
without the slightest cause, and to-night he was more so than 
ever, for Mary, since she had heard of James’ intended departure, 
had grown very grave and silent. He stood, hat in hand, ready 
to depart, and, as usual, when he meant mischief, spoke in his 
sweetest tones. 

“I am afraid I must be saying good evening, Mr. Thornton. 
Why, James,” he added, “this is something quite new. So you 
are going to Botany without waiting to be sent there. Ha ! ha ! 
Well, I wish you every sort of good luck. My dear friend, 
Hamlyn, too. What a loss he’ll be to our little society, so 
sociable and affable as he always is to us poor fanners’ sons. 
You’ll find it lonely there, though. You should get a wife to 
take with you. Oh, yes, I should certainly get married before I 
went. Good night.” 

All this was meant to be as irritating as possible ; but as he 
wont out at the door he had the satisfaction to hear James’ clear 
honest laugh mingling with the Vicar’s, for, as George had closed 
the door, the Doctor had said, looking after him — 

“ Gott in Himmel, that yomig man has got a skull like a tom^ 
cat. 

This complimentary observation was lost on Mary, who had left 
the room with George. The Vicar looked round for her, and 
sighed when he missed her. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


21 


“ Ah ! ” said he ; “I wish he was going instead of you.” 

“ So does the new colony, I’ll be bound,” added the Doctor. 

Soon after this the party separated. When James and the 
Doctor stood outside the door, the latter demanded, “ Where are 
you going? ” 

“ To Sydney, I believe. Doctor.” 

“ Goose. I mean now.” 

“ Home.” 

“ No, you ain’t,” said the Doctor, “ you are going to walk up 
to Hamlyn’s with me, and hear me discourse.” Accordingly, 
about eleven o’clock, these two arrived at my house, and sat 
before the fire till half-past three in the morning ; and in that 
time the doctor had given us more information about New South 
Wales than we had been able to gather from ordinary sources in 
a month. 


CHAPTER V. 

IN W'HICH THE EEADER IS MADE ACCOMPLICE TO A MISPRISION 
OF FELONY. 

Those who only know the river Taw as he goes sweeping, clear 
and full, past orchards and farmhouses, by woods and parks, and 
through long green meadows, after he has left Dartmoor, have 
little idea of the magnificent scene which rewards the persever- 
ance of any one who has the curiosity to follow him up to his 
granite cradle between the two loftiest eminences in the West 
of England. 

On the left. Great Cawsand heaves up, do^Mi beyond down, a 
vast sheet of purple heath and golden whin, while on the right 
the lofty serrated ridge of Yestor starts boldly up, black against 
the western sky, throwing a long shadow over the wild waste of 
barren stone at his feet. 

Some Scotchmen, perhaps, may smile at my applying the word 
“magnificent ” to heights of only 2,100 feet. Yet I have been 
among mountains which double Ben Nevis in height, and with the 
exception of the Murray Gates in Australia, and a glen in Madeira, 
whose name I have forgotten, I have never seen among them the 
equal of some of the northern passes of Dartmoor for gloomy 
magnificence. For I consider that scenery depends not so much 
on height as on abruptness. 


22 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


It is an evil, depressing place. Far as the eye can reach up the 
glen and to the right, it is one horrid waste of grey granite ; here 
and there a streak of yellow grass or a patch of black bog ; not a 
tree nor a shrub within the sky-line. On a hot summer’s day it 
is wearisome enough for the lonely angler to listen to the river 
crawling lazily through the rocks that choke his bed, mingled with 
the clocking of some water-moved boulder, and the chick-chick of 
the stonechat, or the scream of the golden plover over head. But 
on a wild winter’s evening, when day is fast giving place to night, 
and the mist shrouds the hill, and the wild wind is rushing 
hoarse through tor and crag, it becomes awful and terrible in 
the extreme. 

On just such a night as that, at that time when it becomes 
evident that the little light we have had all day is about to leave 
us, a lonely watcher was standing by the angry swelling river in 
the most desolate part of the pass, at a place where a vast con- 
fusion of formless rocks crosses the stream, torturing it into a 
hundred boiling pools and hissing cascades. 

He stood on the summit of a cairn close to the river, and every 
now and then, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked eastward 
through the driving rain, as though expecting some one who came 
not. But at length, grown tired of watching, he with an oath 
descended to a sheltered corner among the boulders, where a 
smouldering peat-fire was giving out more smoke than heat, and, 
crouching over it, began to fan the embers with his hat. 

He was a somewhat short, though powerful man, in age about 
forty, very dark in complexion, with black whiskers growing half 
over his chin. His nose was hooked, his eyes were black and 
piercing, and his lips thin. His face was battered like an old 
sailor’s, and every careless, unstudied motion of his body was as 
wild and reckless as could he. There was something about his 
tout ensemble, in short, that would have made an Australian police- 
man swear to him as a convict without the least hesitation. 

There were redeeming points in the man’s face, too. There 
was plenty of determination, for instance, in that lower jaw ; and 
as he bent now over the fire, and his thoughts wandered away to 
other times and places, the whole appearance of the man seemed 
to change and become milder and kindlier ; yet when some slight 
noise makes him lift his head and look round, there is the old 
expression back again, and he looks as reckless and desperate as 
ever ; what he is is more apparent, and the ghost of what he 
might have been has not wholly departed. 

I can picture to myself that man scowling behind the bayonet 
line at Maida, or rapidly and coolly serving his gun at Trafalgar, 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


23 


helping to win the dominion of all seas, or taking his trick at the 
helm through arctic icehlocks with Parry, or toiling on with 
steadfast Sturt, knee-deep in the sand of the middle desert, 
patiently yet hopelessly scanning the low quivering line of the 
north-west horizon. 

In fifty situations where energy and courage are required, I can 
conceive that man a useful citizen. Yet here he is on the lone 
moor, on the winter’s night, a reckless, cursing, thrice convicted 
man. His very virtues, — his impatient energy and undeniable 
courage, — his greatest stumbling-blocks, leading him into crimes 
which a lazy man or a coward would have shrunk from. Deserted 
apparently by God and man, he crouched there over the low fire, 
among his native rocks, and meditated fresh villanies. 

He had been transported at eighteen for something, I know 
not what, which earned transportation in those days, and since 
then his naturally violent temper, aggravated instead of being 
broken by penal discipline, had earned him three fresh convictions 
in the colony. From the last of these sentences he had escaped, 
with a cunning and address which had baffled the vigilance of 
the Sydney police, good as they were, and had arrived home, two 
years before this time, after twenty-one years’ absence, at his 
native village in the moor. 

None there knew him, or even guessed who he was. His 
brother, a small farmer, who would have taken him to his heart 
had he recognised him, always regarded him as a suspicious 
stranger ; and what cut him deeper still, his mother, his old, half- 
blind, palsied mother, whose memory he had in some sort cherished 
through the horrors of the hulk, the convict-ship, the chain-gang, 
and the bush, knew him not. Only once, when he was speaking 
in her presence, she said abruptly, — 

“ The voice of him is like the voice of my boy that was took 
away. But he was smooth-faced, like a girl, and ye’re a dark, 
wrinkled man. ’Sides, he died years agone, over the water.” 

But the old lady grew thoughtful and silent from that day, and 
three weeks after she was carried up to her grave, — 

“By the little grey church on the windy hill.” 

At the funeral, William Lee, the man whom I have been 
describing, pushed quietly through the little crowd, and as they 
threw the first earth on the coffln, stood looking over the shoulder 
of his brother, who was unconscious of his existence. 

Like many men who have been much in great solitudes, and 
have gone days and weeks sometimes without meeting a feUow- 


24 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


creature, he had acquired the habit of thinking aloud, and if 
any one had been listening they would have heard much such 
a soliloquy as the following, expletives omitted, or rather 
softened : — 

“ A brutal cold country this, for a man to camp out in. Never 
a buck-log to his fire, no, nor a stick thicker than your finger for 
seven mile round ; and if there was, you’d get a month for cutting 
it. If the young ’un milks free this time. I’ll be off to the bay again, 
I know. But will he ? By George, he shall though. The young 
snob, I know he daren’t but come, and yet it’s my belief he’s late 
just to keep me soaking out in the rain. Whew ! it’s cold enough 
to freeze the tail ofi* a tin possum ; and this infernal rubbish 
won’t burn, at least not to waim a man. If it wasn’t for the 
whisky I should be dead. There’s a rush of wind ; I am glad 
for one thing there is no dead timber overhead. He’ll be drinking 
at all the places coming along to get his courage up to bounce me, 
but there ain’t a public-house on the road six miles from this, so 
the drink will have pretty much died out of him by the time he 
gets to me, and if I can get him to sit in this rain, and smoke 
’backer for five minutes, he won’t be particular owdacious. 
I’ll hide the grog, too, between the stones. He’ll be asking 
for a drink the minute he comes. I hope I)ick is ready ; he 
is pretty sure to be. He’s a good little chap, that Dick ; 
he has stuck to me well these five years. I wouldn’t like to 
trust him with another man’s horse, though. But this other one 
is no good ; he’s got all the inclination to go the whole hog, and 
none of the pluck necessary. If he ever is lagged, he will be 
a worse one than ever I was, or Dick either. There he is, for 
a hundred pounds.” 

A faint “ halloo ! ” sounded above the war of the weather ; and 
Lee, putting his hand to his mouth, replied with that strange cry, 
so well known to all Australians — “ Coee.” 

A man was now heard approaching through the darkness, now 
splashing deep into some treacherous moss hole with a loud curse, 
now blundering among loose -lying blocks of stone. Lee waited 
till he was quite close, and then seizing a bunch of gorse lighted 
it at his fire and held it aloft ; the bright blaze fell full upon the 
face and features of George Hawker. 

“A cursed place and a cursed time,” he began, “for an ap- 
pointment. If you had wanted to murder me, I could have 
understood it. But I am pretty safe, I think ; your interest don’t 
lie that way.” 

“Well, well, you see,” returned Lee, “I don’t want any 
meetings on the cross up at my place in the village. The 


-GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


25 


whole house ain’t mine, and we don’t know who may be listen- 
ing. I am suspected enough already, and it wouldn’t look well 
for you to be seen at my place. Folks would have begun axing 
what for.” 

“Don’t see it,” said George. “Besides, if you did not want 
to see me at home, why the devil do you bring me out here in the 
middle of the moor ? We might have met on the hill underneath 
the village, and when we had done business gone up to the public - 
house. D d if I understand it.” 

He acquiesced sulkily to the arrangement, however, because he 
saw it was no use talking about it, but he was far from comfort- 
able. He would have been still less so had he known that Lee’s 
shout had brought up a confederate, who was now peering over 
the rocks, almost touching his shoulder. 

“ Well,” said Lee, “ here we are, so we had better be as com- 
fortable as we can this devil’s night.” 

“ Got anything to drink ? ” 

“ Deuce a swipe of grog have I. But I have got some real 
Barret’s twist, that never paid duty as I know’d on, so just smoke 
a pipe before we begin talking, and show you ain’t vexed.” 

“ I’d sooner have had a drop of grog, such a night as this.” 

“ We must do as the Spaniards do, when they can’t get any- 
thing,” said Lee ; “go without.” 

They both lit their pipes, and smoked in silence for a few 
minutes, till Lee resumed : — 

“ If the witches weren’t all dead, there would be some of them 
abroad to-night ; hear that ? ” 

“ Only a whimbrel, isn’t it ? ” said George. 

“ That’s something worse than a whimbrel, I’m thinking,” said 
the other. “ There’s some folks don’t believe in witches and the 
like,” he continued ; “ but a man that’s seen a naked old hag of 
a gin ride away on a myall-bough, knows better.” 

“ Lord ! ” said George. “ I shouldn’t have thought you’d have 
believed in the like of that — but I do — that old devil’s dam, dame 
Parker, that lives alone up in Hatherleigh Wood, got gibbering 
some infernal nonsense at me the other day for shooting her black 
cat. I made the cross in the road though, so I suppose it won’t 
come to anything.” 

“ Perhaps not,” said Lee ; “ but I’d sooner kill a man than a 
black cat.” 

Another pause. The tobacco, so much stronger than any George 
had been accustomed to, combined with the cold, made him feel 
nervous and miserable. 

“ When I was a boy,” resumed Lee, “ there were two young 


26 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


brothers made it up to rob the squire’s house, down at Gidleigli. 
They separated in the garden after they cracked the crib, agree- 
ing to meet here in this very place, and share the swag, for they 
had got nigh seventy pound. They met and quarrelled over 
the sharing up ; and the elder one drew out a pistol, and shot 
the younger dead. The poor boy was sitting much where you are 
sitting now, and that long tuft of grass grew up from his blood.” 

“ I believe that’s all a lie,” said George ; “ you want to drive 
me into the horrors with your humbugging tales.” 

Lee, seeing that he had gone far enough, if not too far, pro- 
posed, somewhat sulkily, that they should begin to talk about 
what brought them there, and not sit crouching in the wet 
all night. 

“Well,” said George, “it’s you to begin. What made you 
send for me to this infernal place ? ” 

“ I want money,” said Lee. 

“ Then you’d better axe about and get some,” said George ; 

you’ll get none from me. I am surprised that a man with 
your knowledge of the world should have sent me such a letter as 
you did yesterday, I am indeed — What the devil’s that ? ” 

He started on his feet. A blaze of sudden light filled the nook 
where they were sitting, and made it as bright as day, and a voice 
shouted out, 

“ Ha, ha, ha ! my secret coves, what’s going on here ? some- 
thing quiet and sly, eh ? something worth. a fifty-pouno note, eh ? 
Don’t you want an arbitrator, eh ? Here’s one, ready made.” 

“ You’re playing a dangerous game, my flashman, whoever you 
are,” said Lee, rising savagely. “ I’ve shot a man down for less 
than that. So you’ve been stagging this gentleman and me, and 
listening, have you ? For just half a halfpenny,” he added, strid- 
ing towards him, and drawing out a pistol, “ you shouldn’t go home 
this night.” 

“ Don’t you be a fool. Bill Lee,” said the new comer. “ I saw 
the light and made towards it, and as I come up I heard some 
mention made of money. Now then, if my company is disagree- 
able, why I’ll go, and no harm done.” 

“ What ! it’s you, is it? ” said Lee ; “ well, now you’ve come, 
you may stop and hear what it’s all about. I don’t care, you are 
not very squeamish, or at least usedn’t to be.” 

George saw that the arrival of this man was preconcerted, and 
cursed Lee bitterly in his heart, but he sat still, and thought how 
he could out-manoeuvre them. 

“ Now,” said Lee, “ I ain’t altogether sorry that you have come, 
for I want to tell you a bit of a yam, and ask your advice about 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


27 


my behaviour. This is about the state of the case. A young 
gentleman, a great friend of mine, was not very many years ago 
pretty much given up to fast living, cock-fighting, horse-racing, 
and many other little matters which all young fellows worth 
anything are pretty sure to indulge in, and which are very agree- 
able for the time, but which cost money, and are apt to bring a 
man into low society. When I tell you that he and I first met in 
Exeter, as principals in crossing a fight, you may be sure that 
these pursuits had brought the young gentleman into very low 
company indeed. In fact, he was over head and ears in debt, 
raising money in every way he could, hook or crook, square or 
cross, to satisfy certain creditors, who were becoming nasty 
impatient and vexatious. I thought something might be made of 
this young gentleman, so finding there was no pride about him, I 
cultivated his acquaintance, examined his affairs, and put him up 
to the neatest little fakement in the world, just showed him how 
to raise two hundred pounds, and clear himself with everybody, 
just by signing his father’s name, thereby saving the old gent the 
trouble of writing it (he is very infirm, is dad), and anticipating 
by a few years what must be his own at last. Not to mention 
paying off a lot of poor publicans and horse-dealers, who could 
not afford to wait for their money. Slowed if I don’t think it the 
most honest action he ever did in his life. Well, he committed 
the — wrote the name, I mean — and stood two ten-pound notes for 
the information, quite handsome. But now this same young gent 
is going to marry a young lady with five thousand pounds in her 
own right, and she nearly of age. Her father, I understand, is 
worth another five thousand, and very old ; so that what he 11 
get ultimately if he marries into that family, counting his omi 
expectations, won’t be much less I should say than twenty 
thousand pounds. Now, I mean to say, under these circum- 
stances, I should be neglecting my own interests most culpably 
if I didn’t demand from him the trifling sum of three hundred 
pounds for holding my tongue.” 

“Why, curse you,” broke in Hawker, “you said two hundred 

yesterday.” 

“ Exactly so,” said Lee, “ but that was yesterday. To-morrow, 
if the job ain’t settled, it’ll be four, and the day after five. It’s 
no use, George Hawker,” he continued ; “ you are treed, and you 
can’t help yourself. If I give information you swing, and you 
know it ; but I’d rather have the money than see the man hanged. 
But mind,” said he, with a snarl, “ if I catch you playing false, 
by the Lord, I’ll hang you for love.” 

For an instant the fetched George cast a hurried glance 


28 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


around, as if considering what wild chance there was of mastering 
his two enemies, but that glance showed him that it was hopeless, 
for they both stood close together, each holding in his hand a 
cocked pistol, so in despair he dropped his eyes on the fire once 
more, while Lee chuckled inwardly at his wise foresight in bring- 
ing an accomplice. 

“By Jove,” he said to himself, “it’s lucky Dick’s here. If 
I had been alone, he’d have been at me then like a tiger. It 
would have been only man to man, but he would have been as 
good as me ; he’d have fought like a rat in a corner.” 

George sat looking into the embers for a full half minute, while 
the others waited for his answer, determined that he should speak 
first. At length he raised his head, and said hoarsely, looking at 
neither of them — 

“ And where am I to get three hundred pounds ? ” 

“A simple question very easily answered,” said Lee. “Do 
what you did before, with half the difliculty. You manage nearly 
everything now your father is getting blind, so you need hardly 
take the trouble of altering the figures in the banker’s hook, and 
some slight hint about taking a new farm would naturally account 
for the old man’s drawing out four or five hundred. The thing’s 
easier than ever.” 

“Take my advice, young man,” said Dick, “and take the 
shortest cut out of the wood. You see my friend here, William, 
has got tired of these parts, as being, you see, hardly free and 
easy enough for him, and he wants to get hack to a part of the 
world he was rather anxious to leave a few years ago. If he likes 
to take me back with him, why he can. I rather fancy the notion 
myself. Give him the money, and in three months we’ll both be 
fourteen thousand odd miles off. Meanwhile, you marry the young 
lady, and die in your bed, an honest gentleman, at eighty-four, 
instead of being walked out some cold morning to a gallows at 
twenty-two.” 

“Needs must where the devil drives,” replied George. “You 
shall have the money this day week. And now let me go, for I 
am nearly froze dead.” 

“That’s the talk,” said Lee; “I knew you would he reason- 
able. If it hadn’t been for my necessities, I am sure I never 
would have bothered you. Well, good night.” 

George rose and departed eastward, towards the rising moon, 
while Lee and his companion struck due west across the moor. 
The rain had ceased, and the sky' was clear, so that there was not 
much difficulty in picking their way through the stones and moss- 
hags. Suddenly Lee stopped, and said to his comrade, with an oath — - 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


‘29 


“ Dick, my boy, I didn’t half like the way that dog left us.” 

“ Nor I either,” replied the other. “He has got some new 
move in his head, you may depend on it. He’ll give you the slip 
if he can.” 

“ Let him try it,” said Lee ; “oh, only just let him try it.” 
And then the pair of worthies walked liome. 


CHAPTER VI. 

GEORGE HAWKER GOES TO THE FAIR WRESTLES, BUT GETS THROWN 

ON HIS BACK SHOOTS AT A MARK, BUT MISSES IT. 

Lee had guessed rightly. When George found himself so 
thoroughly entrapped, and heard all his most secret relations 
with Lee so openly discussed before a third man, he was in 
utter despair, and saw no hope of extrication from his difficulties. 
But this lasted for a very short time. Even while Lee and Dick 
were still speaking, he was reflecting how to turn the tables on 
them, and already began to see a sparkle of hope glimmering afar. 

Lee was a returned convict, George had very little doubt of 
that. A thousand queer expressions he had let fall in conversa- 
tion had shown him that it was so. And now, if he could but 
prove it, and get Lee sent back out of the way. And yet that 
would hardly do after all. It would be difficult to identify him. 
His name gave no clue to who he was. There were a thousand 
or two of Lees hereabouts, and a hundred William Lees at least. 
StiU it was evident that he was originally from this part of the 
country ; it was odd no one had recognised him. 

So George gave up this plan as hopeless. “Still,” said he, 
“there is a week left; surely I can contrive to bowl him out 
somehow.” And then he walked on in deep thought. 

He was crossing the highest watershed in the county by an 
open, low-sided valley on the southern shoulder of Cawsand. To 
the left lay the mountain, and to the right tors of weathered 
granite, dim in the changing moonlight. Before him was a small 
moor-pool, in summer a mere reedy marsh, but now a bleak tarn, 
standing among dangerous mosses, sending ghostly echoes across 
the solitude, as the water washed wearily against the black peat 
shores, or rustled among the sere skeleton reeds in the shallow 
bays. 


80 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


Suddenly he stopped with a jar in his brain and a chill at his 
heart. His breath came short, and raising one hand, he stood 
beating the ground for half a minute with his foot. He gave a 
stealthy glance around, and then murmured hoarsely to himself — 

“ Aye, that would do ; that would do well. And I could do it, 
too, when I was half-drunk.” 

Was that the devil, chuckling joyous to himself across the bog ? 
No, only an innocent little snipe, getting merry over the change 
of weather, bleating to his companions as though breeding time 
were come round again. 

Crowd close, little snipes, among the cup-moss and wolf’s foot, 
for he who stalks past you over the midnight moor meditates a 
foul and treacherous murder in his heart. 

Yes, it had come to that, and so quickly. He would get this 
man Lee, who held his life in his hand, and was driving him on 
from crime to crime, to meet him alone on the moor if he could, 
and shoot him. What surety had he that Lee would leave him 
in peace after this next extortion ? none but his word — the word 
of a villain like that. He knew what his own word was worth ; 
what wonder if he set a small value on Lee’s ? He might be hung 
as it was ; he would be hung for something. Taw Steps was a 
wild place, and none were likely to miss either Lee or his friend. 
It would be supposed they had tramped off as they came. There 
could be no proof against him, none whatever. No one had 
ever seen them together. They must both go. Well, two men 
were no worse than one. Hatherleigh had killed four men with 
his own hand at AVaterloo, and they gave him a medal for it. 
They were likely honest fellows enough, not such scoundrels as 
these two. 

So arguing confusedly with himself, only one thing certain in 
his mind, that he was committed to the perpetration of this crime, 
and that the time for drawing back was passed long ago, he 
walked rapidly onwards towards the little village where he had left 
his horse in an outhouse, fearing to trust him among the danger- 
ous bogs which he had himself to cross to gain the rendezvous at 
Taw Steps. 

He rapidly cleared the moor, and soon gained the little grey 
street, lying calm and peaceful beneath the bright winter moon, 
which was only now and then obscured for a moment by the last 
flying clouds of the late storm hurrying after their fellows. The 
rill which ran brawling loud through the village, swollen by the 
late rains, at length forced on his perception that he was fearfully 
thirsty, and that his throat was parched and dry. 

“ This is the way men feel in hell, I think,” said he. “ Lord I 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


31 


let me get a drink while I can. The rich man old Jack reads 
about couldn’t get one for all his money.” 

He walked up to a stone horse-trough, a little off the road. He 
stooped to drink, and started hack with an oath. What pale, wild, 
ghastly face was that, looking at him out of the cool calm water ? 
Not his own, surely ? He closed his eyes, and, having drunk 
deep, walked on refreshed. He reached the outhouse where his 
horse was tied, and, as he was leading the impatient animal forth, 
one of the children within the cottage adjoining woke up and 
began to cry. He waited still a moment, and heard the mother 
arise and soothe it ; then a window overhead opened, and a woman 
said — 

“ Is that you, Mr. Hawker ? ” 

“ Aye,” said he, “ it’s me. Come for the horse.” 

He was startled at the sound of his own voice. It was like 
another man’s. But like the voice of some one he seemed to 
know, too. A new acquaintance. 

“ It will he morn soon,” resumed the woman. “ The child is 
much worse to-night, and I think he’ll go before daybreak. WeU, 
well — much sorrow saved, maybe. I’ll go to bed no more to- 
night, lest my hoy should be off while I’m sleeping. Good night, 
sir. God bless you. May you never know the sorrow of losing 
a firstborn.” 

Years after he remembered those random words. But now he 
only thought that if the brat should die, there would be only one 
pauper less in Bickerton. And so thinking, mounted and rode on 
his way. 

He rode fast, and was soon at home. He had put his horse in 
the stable, and, shoeless, was creeping up to bed, when, as he 
passed his father’s door, it opened, and the old man came out, 
light in hand. 

He was a very infirm old man, much bent, though evidently at 
one time he had been of great stature. His retreating forehead, 
heavy grey eyebrows, and loose sensual mouth, rendered him no 
pleasing object at any time, and, as he stood in the doorway now, 
with a half drunken, satyr-like leer on his face, he looked perfectly 
hideous. 

‘‘ Where’s my pretty boy been ? ” he piped out. “ How pale 
he looks. Are you drunk, my lad ? ” 

“ No I wish I was,” replied George. “ Give me the keys- dud; 
and let me get a drink of brandy. I’ve been vexed, and had 
nought to drink all night. I shall be getting the horrors if I 
don’t have something before I go to bed.” 

The old man got him half a tumbler of brandy from his room, 


32 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


where there was always some to he had, and following him into 
his room, sat do’wm on the bed. 

“ Who’s been vexing my handsome son? ” said he ; “ my son 
that I’ve been waiting up for all night. Death and gallows to 
them, whoever they are. Is it that pale-faced little parson’s 
daughter ? Or is it her tight-laced hypocrite of a father, that 
comes whining here with his good advice to me who know the 
world so well ? Never mind, my boy. Keep a smooth face, and 
play the humbug till you’ve got her, and her money, and then 
break her impudent little heart if you will. Go to sleep, my boy, 
and dream you are avenged on them all.” 

“ I mean to be, father, on some of them, I tell you,” replied 
George. 

“ That’s right, my man. Good night.” 

“ Good night, old dad,” said George. As he watched him out 
of the room, a kinder, softer expression came on his face. His 
father was the only being he cared for in the world. 

He slept a heavy and dreamless sleep that night, and when he 
woke for the first time, the bright winter’s sun was shining into 
his room, and morning was far advanced. 

He rose, strengthened and refreshed by his sleep, with a light 
heart. He began whistling as he dressed himself, but suddenly 
stopped, as the recollection of the night before came upon him. 
Was it a reality, or only a dream ? No ; it was true enough. He 
has no need to whistle this morning. He is entangled in a web 
of crime and guilt from which there is no escape. 

He dressed himself, and went forth into the fresh morning air 
for a turn, walking up and dovm on the broad gravel walk before 
the dark old porch. 

A glorious winter’s morning. The dismal old stone-house, 
many- gabled, held aloft its tall red chimneys towards the clear 
blue sky, and looked bright and pleasant in the sunshine. The 
deep fir and holly woods which hemmed it in on all sides, save in 
front, were cheerful with sloping gleams of sunlight, falling on 
many a patch of green moss, red fern, and bright brown last year’s 
leaves. In front, far below him, rolled away miles of unbroken 
woodland, and in the far distance rose the moor, a dim cloud of 
pearly grey. 

A robin sat and sung loud beside him, sole songster left in the 
wintry woods, but which said, as plain as bird could say, could he 
have imderstood it, “ See, the birds are not all dead in this dreary 
winter time. I am still here, a pledge from my brothers. AVhen 
yon dim grey woods grow green, and the brown hollows are yellow 
with kingcups and primroses, the old melody you know so well 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


?.3 

shall begin again, and the thrush from the oak top shall answer 
to the golden-toned blackbird in the copse, saying — ‘ Our mother 
is not dead, hut has been sleeping. She is awake again — let all 
the land rejoice.’ ” 

Little part had that poor darkened mind in such thoughts as 
these. If any softening influence were upon him this morning, 
he gave no place to it. The robin ceased, and he only heard the 
croak of a raven, an old inhabitant of these wild woods, coming 
from the darkest and tallest of the fir-trees. Then he saw his 
father approaching along the garden walk. 

One more chance for thee, unhappy man. Go up to him now, 
and tell him all. He has been a kind father to you, with all his 
faults. Get him on your side, and you may laugh Lee to scorn. 
Have you not the courage to tell him ? 

For a moment he hesitated, but the dread of his father’s burst 
of anger kept him silent. He hardened his heart, and, whistling, 
waited for the old man to come up. 

“ How is he this morning? ” said his father. “ What has he 
got his old clothes on for, and such fine ones as he has in his 
drawer ? ” 

“ Why should I put on my best clothes this day, father ? ” 

“ Aint’ee going down to revels ? ” 

“ True,” said George. “ I had forgotten all about it. Yes ; 
I shall go down, of course.” 

“ Are you going to play (wrestle) ? ” asked the father. 

“ Maybe I may. But come in to breakfast. Where’s 
Madge ? ” 

“In-doors,” said the father, “waiting breakfast — mortal 
cross.” 

“ Curse her crossness,” said George. “ If I were ye, dad, I’d 
kick her out in the lane next time she got on one of her tan- 
trums.” 

A tall woman about forty stepped out of the house as he uttered 
these words. “ Ye hear what he says, William Hawker,” she 
said. “ Ye hear what ye’re own lawful son says. He’d kick me 
out in the lane. And ye’d stand there and let him, ye old dog ; 
I don’t doubt.” 

“ Hush, George,” said the old man. “ You don’t know what 
you’re saying, boy. Go in, Madge, and don’t be a fool ; you bring 
it on yourself.” 

The woman turned in a contemptuous way and walked in. She 
was a very remarkable looking person. Tall and upright, at least 
six feet high, with swarthy complexion, black eyes, and coal-black 
hair, looped up loosely in a knot behind. She must have been 

4 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


^'4 

very beautiful as a young girl, but was now too fierce and hawkish 
looking, though you would still call her handsome. She was a 
full-blooded gipsy, of one of the best families, which, however, she 
totally denied. When I say that she bore the worst of characters 
morally, and had the reputation besides of being a witch of the 
highest acquirements, — a sort of double first at Satan’s university, 
— I have said all I need to say about her at present. 

These three sat down to breakfast not before each of them, how- 
ever, had refreshed themselves with a dram. All the meal through, 
the old man and Madge were quarrelling with one another, till at 
length the contest grew so fierce that George noticed it, a thing 
he very seldom took the trouble to do. 

“ I tell thee,” said the old man, “ ye’ll get no more money this 
week. What have ’ee done with the last five pounds ? ” 

George knew well enough, she had given it to him. Many a 
time did she contrive to let him have a pound or two, and blind 
the old man as to where it was gone. The day before he had 
applied to her for some money and she had refused, and in revenge, 
George had recommended his father to turn her out, knowing that 
she could hear every word, and little meaning it in reality. 

“Ye stingy old beast, ^ she replied, very slowly and distinctly, 
“ I wish ye were dead and out of the way. I’ll be doing it my- 
self some of these odd times.” And looking at him fixedly and 
pointing her finger, she began the Hebrew alphabet — Aleph, Beth, 
&c. from the 119th Psalm. 

“ I won’t have it,” screamed the old man. “ Stop, or I’ll kill 

you, I will ! George, you won’t see your father took before 

your eyes. Stop her ! ” 

“ Come, quiet, old girl ! none of that,” said George, taking 
her round the waist and putting his hand before her mouth. “ Be 
reasonable now.” She continued to look at the old man with a 
smile of triumph for a short time, and then said, with a queer 
laugh : 

“It’s lucky you stopped me. Oh, very lucky indeed. Now, 
are you going to give the money, you old Jew ? ” 

She had carried the day, and the old man sulkily acquiesced. 
George went up stairs, and having dressed himself to his taste, 
got on horseback and rode do\vn to the village, which was about 
three miles. 

This was the day of the Bevels, which corresponds pretty well 
with what is called in other parts of England a pleasure fair ; that 
is to say, although some business might be done, yet it was onlv 
a secondary object to amusement. 

The main village of Drumston was about a mile from the church 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


35 


which I have before noticed, and consisted of a narrow street of 
cobhouses, whitewashed and’ thatched, crossing at right angles, by 
a little stone bridge, over a pretty, clear trout- stream. All around 
the village, immediately behind the hacks of the houses, rose the 
abrupt red hills, divided, into fields by broad oak hedges, thickly 
set with elms. The water of the stream, intercepted at some point 
higher up, was carried round the crown of the hills for the purposes 
of irrigation, which, even at this dead season, showed its advan- 
tages by the brilliant emerald green of the tender young grass on 
the hillsides. Drumston, in short, was an excellent specimen of a 
close, dull, dirty, and, I fear, not very healthy Devonshire village 
in the red country. 

On this day the main street, usually in a state of ankle-deep 
mud six months in the year, was churned and pounded into an 
almost knee-deep state, by four or five hundred hobnail shoes in 
search of amusement. The amusements were various. Drinking 
(very popular), swearing (ditto), quarrelling, eating pastry ginger- 
bread and nuts (female pastime), and looking at a filthy Italian, 
leading a still more filthy monkey, who rode on a dog (the only 
honest one of the three). This all day, till night dropped down 
on a scene of drunkenness and vice, which we had better not seek 
to look at further. Surely, if ever man was right, old Joey Bender, 
the Methodist shoemaker, was right, when he preached against 
the revels for four Sundays running, and said roundly that he 
would sooner see all his congregation leave him and go up to 
the steeple-house (church) in a body, than that they should attend 
such a crying abomination. 

The westling, the only honest sensible amusement to he had, 
was not in much favour at Drumston. Such wrestling as there 
was was carried on in a little croft behind the principal of the 
public-houses, for some trifling prize, given by the publicans. 
Into this place, James Stockhridge and myself had wandered on 
the afternoon of the day in question, having come down to the 
revel to see if we could find some one we wanted. 

There was a small ring of men watching the performances, and 
talking, each and all of them, not to his neighbour, or to himself, 
but to the ambient air, in the most unintelligible Devonshire 
jargon, rendered somewhat more barbarous than usual by intoxica- 
tion. Frequently one of them would address one of the players 
in language more forcible than choice, as he applauded some piece 
of finesse, or condemned some clumsiness on the part of the two 
youths who were struggling about in the centre, under the impres- 
sion they were wrestling. There were but two moderate wrestlers 
in the parish, and those two were George Hawker and James 


36 


'THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


Stockbridge. And James and myself- had hardly arrived on the 
ground two minutes, before George, coming up, greeted us. 

After a few common-place civilities, he challenged James to 
play. “ Let us show these muffs what play is,” said he ; “ it’s a 
disgrace to the county to see such work.” 

James had no objection ; so, having put on the jackets, they 
set to work to the great admiration of the bystanders, one of 
whom, a drunken tinker, expressed his applause in such remark- 
able language that I mildly asked him to desist, which of course 
made him worse. 

The two wrestlers made very pretty play of it for some time, till 
James, feinting at some outlandish manoeuvre, put George on his 
back by a simple trip, akin to scholar’ s-mate at chess. 

George fell heavily, for they were both heavy men. He rose 
from the ground and walked to where his coat was, sulkily. 
James thinking he might have been hurt, went up to speak to him ; 
but the other, greeting him with an oath, turned and walked away 
through the crowd. 

He was in a furious passion, and he went on to the little bridge 
that crossed the stream. We saw him standing looking into the 
water below, when a short light-looking man came up to him, and 
having spoken to him for a few minutes, walked off in the direc- 
tion of Exeter, at a steady, rapid pace. 

That man was Dick, the companion of Lee (I knew all this after- 
wards). George was standing as I have described on the bridge, 
when he came up to him, and touching him, said : 

“ I want to speak to you a moment, Mr. Hawker.” 

George turned round, and when he saw who it was, asked, 
angrily, 

“ What the do you want ? ” 

“ No offence, sir. You see, I’m in trouble, there’s a warrant 
out against me, and I must fly. I am as hard-up as a poor cove 
could be ; can you give me a trifle to help me along the road ? ” 

Here was a slice of good luck ; to get rid of this one so easily. 
George gave him money, and having wished him farewell, watched 
him striding steadily up the long hiU towards Exeter with great 
satisfaction ; then he went back to the public-house, and sat drink- 
ing an hour or more. At last he got out his horse to ride home- 
ward. 

The crowd about the public-house door was as thick as ever, 
and the disturbance greater. Some of the women were trying to 
get their drunken husbands home, one man had fallen do'wn dead- 
drunk beside the door in the mud, and his wife was sitting 
patiently beside him. Several girls were standing wearily about 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


37 


the door, dressed in their best, each with a carefully-folded white 
pocket-handkerchief in her hand for show, and not for use, waiting 
for their sweethearts to come forth when it should suit them ; 
while inside the tap all was a wild confusion of talk, quarrelling, 
oaths, and smoke enough to sicken a scavenger. 

These things are changed now, or are changing, year by year. 
Now we have our rural policeman keeping some sort of order, and 
some show of decency. And indeed these little fairs, the curse of 
the country, are gradually becoming extinct by the exertions of a 
more energetic class of county magistrates ; and though there is 
probably the same amount of vice, public propriety is at all events 
more respected. I think I may say that I have seen as bad, or 
even worse, scenes of drunkenness and disorder at an English fair, 
as ever I have in any Australian mining town. 

George Hawker was so hemmed in by the crowd that he was 
unable to proceed above a foot’s pace. He was slowly picking his 
way through the people, when he felt some one touching him on the 
leg, and, looking round, saw Lee standing beside him. 

“ What, Lee, my boy, you here ? ” said he ; “I have just seen 
your amiable comrade — he seems to be in trouble.” 

“Dick’s always in trouble, Mr. Hawker,” replied he. “He 
has no care or reason ; he isn’t a bad fellow, but I’m always glad 
when he is out of my way ; I don’t like being seen with him. 
This is likely to be his last time, though. He is in a serious 
scrape, and, by way of getting out of it, he is walking into Exeter, 
along the high road, as if nothing was the matter. There’s a 
couple of traps in Belston after him now, and I came down here 
to keep secure. By-the-bye, have you thought of that little matter 
we were talking about the other night ? To tell you the truth, I 
don’t care how soon I am out of this part of the country.” 

“ Oh ! ah ! ” replied George, “ I’ve thought of it, and it’s all 
right. Can you be at the old place the day after to-morrow ? ” 

“ That can I,” said Lee, “ with much pleasure.” 

“You’ll come alone this time, I suppose,” said George. “I 
suppose you don’t want to share our little matter with the whole 
country ? ’ ’ 

“ No fear, Mr. George ; I will be there at eight punctual, and 
alone.” 

“Well, bye-bye,” said George, and rode off. 

It was getting late in the evening when he started, and ere he 
reached home it was nearly dark. For the last mile his road lay 
through forest-land : noble oaks, with a plentiful under-growth of 
holly, overshadowed a floor of brown leaves and red fern ; and at 
the end of the wood nearest home, where the oaks joined his OTvn 


38 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF. 


fir plantations, one mighty gnarled tree, broader and older than all 
the rest, held aloft its withered boughs against the frosty sky. 

This oak was one of the bogie haunts of the neighbourhood. 
All sorts of stories were told about it, all of which George, of 
course, believed ; so that when his horse started and refused to 
move forward, and when he saw a dark figure sitting on the 
twisted roots of the tree, he grew suddenly cold, and believed he 
had seen a ghost. 

The figure rose, and stalked towards him through the gathering 
gloom ; he saw that it held a baby in its arms, and that it w'as tall 
and noble-looking. Then a new fear took possession of him, not 
supernatural ; and he said in a low voice — “ Ellen ! ” 

“ That was my name once, George Hawker,” replied she, stand- 
ing beside him, and laying her hand upon his horse’s ^shoulder. 
“ I don’t know what my name is now, I’m sure ; it surely can’t 
remain the same, and me so altered.” 

“ What on earth brings you back just at this time, in God’s 
name ? ” asked George. 

“ Hunger, cold, misery, drunkenness, disease. Those are the 
merry companions that lead me back to my old sweetheart. Look 
here, George, should you know him again ? ” 

She held up a noble child about a year old, for him to look at. 
The child, disturbed from her warm bosom, began to wail. 

“ What ! cry to see your father, child ? ” she exclaimed. “ See 
what a bonnie gentleman he is, and what a pretty horse he rides, 
while we tread along through the mire.” 

“ What have you come to me for, Ellen ? ” asked George. Do 
you know that if you are seen about here just now you may do me 
a great injury ? ” 

“ I don’t want to hurt you, George,” she replied ; “ but I must 
have money. I cannot work, and I dare not show my face here. 
Can’t you take me in to-night, George, only just to-night, and let 
me lie by the fire ? I’ll go in the morning ; but I know it’s going 
to freeze, and I do dread the long cold hours so. I have lain out 
two nights, now, and I had naught to eat all day. Do’ee take me 
in, George ; for old love’s sake, do ! ” 

She was his own cousin, an orphan, brought up in the same 
house with him by his father. Never very strong in her mind, 
though exceedingly pretty, she had been early brought to ruin by 
Georg'e. On the birth of a boy, about a year before, the old man’s 
eyes were opened to what was going on, and in a furious rage he 
turned her out of doors, and refused ever to see her again. 
George, to do him justice, would have married her, but his father 
told him, if he did so, he should leave the house with her. So the 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


39 


poor thing had gone away and tried to get needlework in Exeter, 
hut her health failing, and George having ceased to answer all 
applications from her, she had walked over, and lurked about in 
the woods to gain an interview with him. 

She laid her hand on his, and he felt it was deadly cold. “ Put 
my coat over your shoulders, Nelly, and wait an instant while I go 
and speak to Madge. I had better let her know you are coming ; 
then we shan’t have any trouble.” 

He rode quickly through the plantation, and gave his horse to a 
hoy who waited in front of the door. In the kitchen he found 
Madge brooding over the fire, with her elbows on her knees, and 
without raising her head or turning round, she said : 

“ Home early, and sober ! what new mischief are you up to ? ” 

“ None, Madge, none ! but here’s the devil to pay. Ellen’s 
come back. She’s been lying out these three nights, and is awful 
hard up. It’s not my fault, I have sent her money enough, in all 
conscience.” 

“ Where is she? ” inquired Madge, curtly. 

“ Outside, in the plantation.” 

“ Why don’t you bring her in, you treacherous young wolf ? ” 
replied she. “ What did you bring her to shame for, if you are 
going to starve her ? ” 

“ I was going to fetch her in,” said George, indignantly ; “ only 
I wanted to find out what your temper was like, you vicious old 
cow. How did I know but what you would begin some of your 
tantrums, and miscall her ? ” 

“ No fear o’ that ! no fear of pots and kettles with me ! lead her 
in, lad, before she’s frozen ! ” 

George went back for her, and finding her still in the same 
place, brought her in. Madge was standing erect before the fire, 
and, walking up to the unfortunate Ellen, took her baby from her, 
and made her sit before the fire. 

“ Better not face the old man,” said she; “he’s away to the 
revels, and he’ll come home drunk. Make yourself happy for to- 
night, at all events.” 

The poor thing began to cry, which brought on such a terrible 
fit of coughing that Madge feared she would rupture a blood- 
vessel. She went to get her a glass of wine, and returned with a 
candle, and then, for the first time, they saw what a fearful object 
she was. 

“ Oh ! ” she said to George, “ you see what I am now. I ain’t 
long for this world. Only keep me from worse, George, while I 
am alive, and do something for the boy afterwards, and I am 
content. You’re going to get married, I know, and I wish you 


40 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


well.. But don’t forget this poor little thing when it’s motherless. 
If you do, and let him fall into vice, you’ll never be lucky, 
George.” 

“ Oh, you ain’t going to die, old Nelly,” said George ; “ not for 
many years yet. You’re pulled down, and thin, hut you’ll pick up 
again with the spring. Now, old girl, get some supper out before 
he comes home.” 

They gave her supper, and put her to bed. In the morning, 
very early, George heard the sound of wheels below his bedroom 
window ; and looking out, saw that Madge was driving out of the 
yard in a light cart, and, watching her closely, saw her pick up 
Ellen and the child just outside the gate. Then he went to bed 
again, and, when he awoke, he heard Madge’s voice below, and 
knew she was come back. 

He went down, and spoke to her. “ Is she gone ? ” he asked. 

“In course she is,” replied Madge. “Do you think I was 
going to let her stay till the old man was about ? ” 

“ How much money did you give her, besides what she had 
from me ? ” 

“ I made it five pounds in all ; that will keep her for some time, 
and then you must send her some more. If you let that wench 
starve, you ought to be burnt alive. A wan wwld have married 
her in spite of his father.” 

“ A likely story,” said George, “ that I w’as to disinherit myself 
for her. However, she shan’t w^ant at present, or w^e shall have 
her hack again. And that won’t do, you know.” 

“ George,” said Madge, “you promise to be as great a rascal 
as your father.” 

The old man had, as Madge prophesied, come home very drunk 
the night before, and had lain in bed later than usual, so that, 
when he came to breakfast, he found George, gun in hand, ready 
to go out. 

“Going shooting, my lad?” said the father. “Where be 
going?” 

“Down through the hollies for a woodcock. I’ll get one this 
morning, it’s near full moon.” 

All the morning they heard him firing in the bottom below the 
' house, and at one o’clock he came home, empty-handed. 

“ Why, George ! ” said his father, “ what hast thee been shoot- 
ing at? I thought ’ee was getting good sport.” 

“I’ve been shooting at a mark,” he replied. 

“Who be going to shoot now, eh, George?” asked the old 
man. 

“ No one as I know of,” he replied. 


OEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


41 


“ Going over to Eggesforcl, eh, Georgey ? This nice full moon 
IS about the right thing for thee. They Fellowes he good fellows 
to keep a fat haunch for their neighbours.” 

George laughed, as he admitted the soft impeachment of deer- 
stealing, but soon after grew sullen, and all the aftenioon sat over 
the fire brooding and drinking. He went to bed early, and had 
just got off his hoots, when the door opened, and Madge came in. 

“ What’s up to now, old girl ? ” said George. 

“ What are you going to he up to, eh ? ” she asked, “ with your 
gun?” 

“ Only going to get an outlying deer,” said he. 

“ Tliat’s folly enough, hut there’s a worse folly than that. It’s 
worse folly to wipe out money-scores in blood. It’s a worse folly 
if you are in a difficulty to put yourself in a harder one to get out 
of the first. It’s a worse ” 

“ Why, you’re mad,” broke in George. Do you think I am 
fool enough to make away with one of the keepers ? ” 

“ I don’t know what you are fool enough to do. Only mind my 
words before it’s too late.” 

She went out, and left him sitting moodily on the bed. “ What 
a clever woman she is,” he mused. “ How she hits a thing off. 
She’s been a good friend to me. I’ve a good mind to ask her 
advice. I’ll think about it to-morrow morning.” 

But on the morrow they quarrelled about something or another, 
and her advice was never asked. George was moody and captious 
all day ; and at evening, having drunk hard, he slipped off, and, 
gun in hand, rode away through the darkening woods towards the 
moor. 

It was dark before he had got clear of the labyrinth of lanes 
through which he took his way. His horse he turned out in a 
small croft close to where the heather began ; and, having hid the 
saddle and bridle in a hedge, strode away over the moor with his 
gun on his shoulder. 

He would not think ; he would sooner whistle ; distance seemed 
like nothing to him ; and he was surprised and frightened to ‘ find 
himself already looking over the deep black gulf through which 
the river ran before he thought he was half-way there. 

He paused to look before he began to descend. A faint light 
still lingered in the frosty sky to the south-west, and majestic 
Yestor rose hold and black against it. Down far, far beneath his 
feet was the river, dimly heard, hut not seen ; and, as he looked 
to where it should be, he saw a little flickering star, which arrested 
his attention. That must be Lee’s fire — there he began to 
descend. 


42 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


Boldly at first, but afterwards more stealthily, and now more 
silently still, for the fire is close by, and it were well to give him 
no notice. It is in the old place, and he can see it now, not ten 
yards before him, between two rocks. 

Nearer yet a little, with cat-like tread. There is Lee, close to 
the fire, sitting on the ground, dimly visible, yet clearly enough 
for his purpose. He rests the gun on a rock, and takes his aim. 

He is pinioned from behind by a vigorous hand, and a voice he 
knows cries in his ear — “ Help, Bill, or you’ll be shot ! ” 

The gun goes off in the scuffle, but hurts nobody, and Lee 
running up, George finds the tables completely turned, and him- 
self lying, after a few desperate struggles, helplessly pinioned on 
the ground. 

Dick had merely blinded him by appearing to go to Exeter. 
They both thought it likely that he would attack Lee, but neither 
supposed he would have stolen on him so treacherously. Dick 
had just noticed him in time, and sprung upon him, or Lee’s 
troubles would have been over for ever. 

“ You treacherous young sweep, you shall hang for this,” were 
Lee’s first words. “ Ten thousand pounds would not save you 
now. Dick, you’re a jewel. If I had listened to you, I shouldn’t 
have trusted my life to the murdering vagabond. I’ll remember 
to-night, my boy, as long as I live.” 

Although it appeared at first that ten thousand pounds would 
not prevent Lee handing George over to justice, yet, after a long 
and stormy argument, it appeared that the lesser sum of five 
hundred would be amply sufficient to stay any ulterior proceedings, 
provided the money was forthcoming in a week. So that ultimately 
George found himself at liberty again, and, to his great astonish- 
ment, in higher spirits than he could have expected. 

“ At all events,” said he to himself, as he limped back, lame 
and bruised, “I have not got that on my mind. Even if this 
other thing was found out, there is a chance of getting off. 
Surely my own father wouldn’t prosecute — though I wouldn’t like 
to trust to it, unless I got Madge on my side.” 

His father, I think I have mentioned, was too blind to read, 
and George used to keep all his accounts ; so that nothing would 
seem at first to look more easy than to imitate his father’s signa- 
ture, and obtain what money he wished. But George knew well 
that the old man was often in the habit of looking through his 
banker’s book, with the assistance of Madge, so that he was quite 
unsafe without her. His former embezzlement he had kept secret, 
by altering some figure in the banker’s book ; but this next one, 
of such a much larger amount, he felt somewhat anxious about. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


43 


He, however, knew his woman well, and took his measures 
accordingly. 

On the day mentioned, he met Lee, and gave him the money 
agreed on ; and having received his assurances that he valued his 
life too much to trouble him any more, saw him depart, fully 
expecting that he should have another application at an early date ; 
under which circumstances, he thought he would take certain pre- 
cautions which should be conclusive. 

But he saw Lee no more. No more for many, many years. 
But how and when they met again, and who came off best in the 
end, this tale will truly and sufficiently set forth hereafter. 


CHAPTER YII. 

MAJOR BUCKLEY GIVES HIS OPINION ON TROUT-FISHING, ON 
EMIGRATION, AND ON GEORGE HAWKER. 

Spring had come again, after a long wet winter, and every 
orchard-hollow blushed once more with apple-blossoms. In warm 
sheltered southern valleys hedges were already green, and even 
the tall hedgerow- elms began, day after day, to grow more shady 
and dense. 

It was a bright April morning, about ten o’clock, when Mary 
Thornton, throwing up her father’s study-window from the outside, 
challenged him to come out and take a walk; and John, getting 
his hat and stick, immediately joined her in front of the house. 

“ Where is your aunt, my love ? ” said John. 

“ She is upstairs,” said Mary. “ I will call her.” 

She began throwing gravel at one of the upper windows, and 
crying out, ‘‘ Auntie ! Auntie ! ” 

The sash was immediately thrown (no, that is too violent a word 

say lifted) up, and a beautiful old lady’s face appeared at the 

window. 

“ My love,” it said, in a small, soft voice, “pray be careful of 
the windows. Did you want anything, my dear ? ” 

“ I want you out for a walk. Auntie ; so come along.” 

“Certainly, my love. Brother, have you got your thick kerchief 
in your pocket ? ” 

“No,” said the Yicar, “I have not, and I don’t mean to have. 

Commencement of a sore-throat lecture from the window, cut 
short by the Yicar, who says — 


^4 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ My cbar, I shall be late if you don’t come.” (Jesuitically on 
his part, for he was going nowhere.) 

So she comes accordingly, as sweet-looking an old maid as ever 
you saw in your life. People have no right to use up such 
beautiful women as governesses. It’s a sheer waste of material. 
Miss Thornton had been a governess all her life ; and now, at the 
age of five-and-forty, had come to keep her brother’s house for 
him, add her savings to his, and put the finishing touch on Mary’s 
somewhat rough education. 

“ My love,” said she, “ I have brought you your gloves.” 

“ Oh, indeed. Auntie, I won’t wear them,” said Mary. “ I 
couldn’t be plagued with gloves. Nobody wears them here.” 

“Mrs. Buckley wears them, and it would relieve my mind if 
you were to put them on, my dear. I fear my lady’s end was 
accelerated by, unfortunately, in her last illness, catching sight of 
Lady Kate’s hands after she had been assisting her brother to pick 
green walnuts.” 

Mary was always on the eve of laughing at these aristocratic 
recollections of her aunt ; and to her credit be it said, she always 
restrained herself, though with great difficulty. She, so wildly 
brought up, without rule or guidance in feminine matters, could 
not be brought to comprehend that prim line-and-rule life, of which 
her aunt was the very impersonation. Nevertheless, she heard 
what Miss Thornton had to say with respect ; and if ever she com- 
mitted an extreme <iaucherie, calculated to set her aunt’s teeth on 
edge, she always discovered what was the matter, and mended it 
as far as she was able. 

They stood on the lawn while the glove controversy was going 
on, and a glorious prospect there was that bright spring morning. 
In one direction the eye was carried doAvn a long, broad, and rich 
vale, intersected by a gleaming river, and aU the way domi set 
thick with hamlet, fam, and church. In the dim soft distance 
rose the two massive towers of a cathedral, now filling aU the 
country side with the gentle melody of their golden-toned bells, 
while beyond them, in the misty south, there was a gleam in the 
horizon, showing where the sky 

“Dipped down to sea and sands.” 

“ It’s as soft and quiet as a Sunday,” said the Vicar ; “ and 
what a fishing day ! I have half a mind — Hallo ! look here.” 

The exclamation was caused by the appearance on the walk of a 
very tall and noble -looking man, about thirty, leading a grey pony, 
on which sat a beautiful woman with a child in her arms. Our 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


45 


party immediately moved forward to meet them, and a most friendly 
greeting took place on both sides, Mary at once taking jjossession 
of the child. 

This was Major Buckley and his wife Agnfes. I mentioned 
before that, after Clere was sold, the Major had taken a cottage in 
Drumston, and was a constant visitor on the Vicar ; generally 
calling for the old gentleman to come fishing or shooting, and 
leaving his wile and his little son Samuel in the company of Mary 
and Miss Thornton. 

“ I have come. Vicar, to take you out fishing,” said he. “ Get 
your rod and come. A capital day. Why, here’s the Doctor.” 

So there was, standing among them before any one had noticed 
him. 

“ I announce,” said he, “ that I shall accept the most agreeable 
invitation that any one will give me. What are you going to do. 
Major ? ” 

“ Going fishing.” 

“Ah ! and you, madam ? ” turning to Miss Thornton. 

“ I am going to see Mrs. Lee, who has a low fever, poor 
thing.” 

“ Which Mrs. Lee, madam ? ” 

“Mrs. Lee of Eyford.” 

“ And which Mrs. Lee of Eyford, madam ? ” 

“ Mrs. James Lee.” 

“ Junior or senior? ” persevered the Doctor. 

“ Junior,” replied Miss Thornton, laughing. 

“ Ah ! ” said the Doctor, “ now we have it. I would suggest 
that all the Mrs. Lees in the parish should have a ticket with a 
number on it, like the voituriers. Buckley, lay it before the 
quarter-sessions. If you say the idea came from a foreigner, they 
will adopt it immediately. Miss Thornton, I will do myself the 
honour of accompanying you, and examine the case.” 

So the ladies went off with the Doctor, while the Vicar and 
Major Buckley turned to go fishing. 

“I shall watch you. Major, instead of fishing myself,” said the 
Vicar. “ Where do you propose going ? ” 

“ To the red water,” said the Major. Accordingly they turn 
down a long, deep lane, which looks certainly as if it would 
lead one to a red brook, for the road and banks are of a brick- 
colour. And so it does, for presently before them they discern a 
red mill, and a broad, pleasant ford, where a crystal brook dimples 
and sparkles over a bed of reddish -purple pebbles. 

“It is very clear,” says the Major. “What’s the fly to be, 
Vicar?” 


46 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 


‘‘ That’s a very hard question to answer,” says the Vicar. 

“ Your Scotchman, eh ? or a small blue dun ? ” 

“ We’ll try both,” says the Major ; and in a very short time it 
becomes apparent that the small dun is the man, for the trout 
seem to think that it is the very thing they have been looking for 
all day, and rise at it two at a time. 

They fish downwards ; and after killing half-a-dozen half-pomid 
fish, come to a place where another stream joins the first, making 
it double its original size, and here there is a great oak-root jutting 
into a large, deep pool. 

The Vicar stands back, intensely excited. This is a sure place 
for a big fish. The Major, eager but cool, stoops down and puts 
his flies in just above the root at once ; not as a greenhorn would, 
taking a few wide casts over the pool first, thereby standing a 
chance of hooking a little fish, and ruining his chance for a big 
one ; and at the second trial a deep-bodied brown fellow, about two 
pounds, dashes at the treacherous little blue, and gulps him down. 

Then what a to-do is there. The Vicar jumping about on the 
grass, giving all sorts of contradictory advice. The Major, utterly 
despairing of ever getting his fish ashore, fighting a losing battle 
with infinite courage, determined that the trout shall remember 
him, at all events, if he does get away. And the trout, furious 
and indignant, but not in the least frightened, trying vainly to get 
back to the old root. Was there ever such a fish ? 

But the Major is the best man, for after ten minutes troutie is 
towed up on his side to a convenient shallow, and the Vicar 
puts on his spectacles to see him brought ashore. He scien- 
tifically pokes him in the flank, and spans him across the back, 
and pronounces ex cathedra — 

“ You’ll find, sir, there won’t be a finer fish, take him all in all, 
killed in the parish this season.” 

“ Ah, it’s a noble sport,” says the Major. “ I shan’t get much 
more of it, I’m afraid.” 

“ Why shouldn’t you ? ” 

“Well, I’ll tell you,” says the Major. “Do you know how 
much property I have got ? ” 

“ No, indeed.” 

“ I have only ten thousand pounds ; and how am I to bring 
up a family on the interest of that? ” 

“ I should fancy it was quite enough for you,” said the Vicar ; 
“ you have only one son.” 

“ How many more am I likely to have, eh? And how should 
I look to find myself at sixty with five boys grown up, and only 
300^. a-year ? ” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


47 


That is rather an extreme case,” said the Vicar; “you 
would be poor then, certainly.” 

“ Just what I don’t want to he. Besides wanting to make 
some money, I am leading an idle life here, and am getting 
very tired of it. And so — ” he hesitated. 

“ And so ? ” said the Vicar. 

“ I am thinking of emigrating. To New South Wales. To go 
into the sheep-farming line. There.” 

“ There indeed,” said the Vicar. “ And what has put you up 
to it?” 1 J r 

“ Why, my wife and I have been thinking of going to Canada for 
some time, and so the idea is not altogether new. The other day 
Hamlyn (you know him) showed me a letter from a cousin of his 
who is making a good deal of money there. Having seen that 
letter, I was much struck with it, and having made a great many 
other inquiries, I laid the whole information before my wife, and 
begged her to give me her opinion.” 

“ And she recommended you to stay at home in peace and 
comfort,” interposed the Vicar. 

“ On the contrary, she said she thought we ought by all means 
to go,” returned the Major. 

“ Wonderful, indeed. And when shall you go ? ” 

“ Not for some time, I think. Not for a year.” 

“I hope not. What a. lonely old man I shall be when you 
are all gone.” 

“ Nay, Vicar, I hope not,” said the Major. “ You will stay 
behind to see your daughter happily married, and your grand- 
children about your knees.” 

The Vicar sighed heavily, and the Major continued. 

“ By-the-bye, Miss Thornton seems to have made a conquest 
already. Young Hawker seems desperately smitten ; did it ever 
strike you ? ” 

“ Yes, it has struck me ; very deep indeed,” said the Vicar ; 
“but what can I do?” 

“ You surely would not allow her to marry him ? ” 

“ How can I prevent it ? She is her own mistress, and I never 
could control her yet. How can I control her when her whole 
heart and soul is set on him?” 

“ Good God ! ” said the Major, “ do you really think she cares 
for him ? ’ ’ 

“ Oh, she loves him with her whole heart. I have seen it 
a long while.” 

“ My dear friend, you should take her away for a short time, and 
see if she will forget him. Anything sooner than let her marry him. ’ ’ 


48 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ Why should she not marry him ? ” said the Vicar. “ She is 
only a farmer’s grand-daughter. We are nobody, you know.” 

“ But he is not of good character.” 

“ Oh, there is nothing more against him than there is against 
most young fellows. He will reform and be steady. Do you know 
anything special against him ? ” asked the Vicar. 

“Not actually against him; but just conceive, my dear friend, 
what a family to marry into ! His father — I speak the plain truth 
— is a most disreputable, drunken old man, living in open sin with 
a gipsy woman of the worst character, by whom Oeorge Hawker 
has been brought up. What an atmosphere of vice ! The young 
fellow himself is universally disliked, and distrusted too, all over 
the village. Can you forgive me for speaking so i3lain?” 

“There is no forgiveness necessary, my good friend;” said 
the Vicar. “ I know how kind your intentions are. But I cannot 
bring myself to have a useless quarrel with my daughter merely 
because I happen to dislike the object of her choice. It would be 
quite a useless quarrel. She has always had her owa. way, and 
always will.” 

“ What does Miss Thornton say? ” asked the Major. 

“ Nothing, she never does say anything. She regards Hawker 
as Mary’s accepted suitor ; and though she may think him vulgar, 
she would sooner die than commit herself so far as to say so. She 
has been so long under others, and without an opinion save theirs, 
that she cannot form an opinion at all.” 

They had turned and were walking home, when the Vicar, 
sticking his walking-cane upright in the grass, began again. 

“ It is the most miserable and lamentable thing that ever took 
place in this world. Look at my sister again : what a delicate 
old maid she is ! used to move and be respected, more than most 
governesses are, in the highest society in the land. There’ll be 
a home for her when I die ! Think of her living in the house with 
any of the Hawkers ; and yet, sir, that woman’s sense of duty is 
such that she’d die sooner than leave her niece. Sooner be burnt 
at the stake than go an inch out of the line of conduct she has 
marked out for herself.” 

The Vicar judged his sister most rightly : we shall see that 
hereafter. 

“ A man of determination and strength of character could have 
prevented it at the beginning, you would say. I dare say he might 
have ; but I am not a man of determination and strength of 
character. I never was, and I never shall be.” 

“ Do you consider it in the light of a settled question, then,” said 
the Major, “ that your daughter should marry j^oung Hawker ? ” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


49 


•' God knows. She will please herself. I spoke to her at first 
about encouraging him, and she began by laughing at me, and 
ended by making a scene whenever I spoke against him. I was 
at one time in hopes that she would have taken a fancy to young 
Stockbridge ; but I fear I must have set her against him by 
praising him too much. It wants a woman, you know, to manage 
those sort of things.” 

“ It does, indeed.” 

“ You see, as I said before, I have no actual reason to urge 
against Hawker, and he will be very rich. I shall raise my voice 
against her living in the house with that woman Madge — in fact, 
I won’t have it ; but take it all in all, I fear I shall have to make 
the best of it.” 

Major Buckley said no more, and soon after they got home. 
There was Mrs. Buckley, queenly and beautiful, waiting for her 
husband ; and there was Mary, pretty, and full of fun ; there 
also was the Doctor, smoking and contemplating a new fem ; 
and Miss Thornton, with her gloved-hands folded, calculating 
uneasily what amount of detriment Mary’s complexion would 
sustain in consequence of walking about without her bonnet in an 
April sun*. 

One and all cried out to know what sport ; and little Sam 
tottered forward demanding a fish for himself, which, having got, 
he at once put into his mouth nead foremost. The Doctor, 
taking off his spectacles, examined the contents of the fish-basket, 
and then demanded ; 

“ Now, my good friend, why do you give yourself the trouble to 
catch trout in that round-about way, requiring so much skill and 
patience ? In Germany we catch them with a net — a far superior 
way, I assure you. Get any one of the idle young fellows about 
the village to "go down to the stream with a net, and they will 
get more trout in a day than you would in a week.” 

“What!” said the Major, indignantly; “put a net in my 
rented water ? — If I caught any audacious scoundrel carrying 
a net within half a mile of it, I’d break his neck. You can’t 
appreciate the delights of fly -fishing, doctor — you are no sportsman.” 

“ No, I ain’t,” said the Doctor ; “you never said anything truer 
than that, James Buckley. I am nothing of the sort. When 
I was a young man, I had a sort of brute instinct, which made me 
take the same sort of pleasure in killing a boar that a cat does 
in killing a mouse ; but I have outlived such barbarism.” 

“ Ha, ha ! ” said the Vicar ; “and yet he gave ten shillings 
for a snipe. And he’s hand-and-glove with every poacher in the 
parish.” 


5 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


-'JO 

“ The snipe was a new species, sir,” said the Doctor, in- 
dignantly ; and if I do employ the hunters to collect for me, I see 
no inconsistency in that. But I consider this fly-fishing mania 
just of a piece with your idiotic^ I repeat it, idiotic institution of 
fox-hunting. Why, if you laid baits poisoned with nux vomica 
about the haunts of those animals, you would get rid of them in 
^ two years.” 

The Doctor used to delight in aggravating the Major by 
attacking English sports ; but he had a great admiration for them 
nevertheless. 

The Major got out his wife’s pony ; and setting her on it, and 
handing up the son and heir, departed home to dinner. They 
were hardly inside the gate when Mrs. Buckley began : 

“ My dear husband, did you bring him to speak of the subject 
we were talking about ? ’ ’ 

‘‘ He went into it himself, wife, tooth and nail.” 

“Well?” 

“ Well ! indeed, my dear Agnes, do you know that, although 
I love the old man dearly, I must say I think he is rather weak.” 

“So I fear,” said Mrs. Buckley; “but he is surely not so 
weak as to allow that young fellow to haunt the house, after he 
has had a hint that he is making love to Mary ? ” 

“ My dear, he accepts him as her suitor. He says he has 
been aware of it for some time, and that he has spoken to Mary 
about it, and made no impression ; so that now he considers it 
a settled thing.” 

“ What culpable weakness ! So Mary encourages him, then ? ” 

“ She adores him, and won’t hear a word against him.” 

“Unfortunate girl!” said Mrs. Buckley, “and with such 
a noble young fellow as Stockbridge ready to cut off his head 
for her 1 It is perfectly inconceivable.” 

“ Young Hawker is very handsome, my dear, you must 
remember.” 

“Is he ? ” said Mrs. Buckley. “ I call him one of the most 
evil-looking men I ever saw.” 

My dear Agnes, I think if you were to speak boldly to her, 
you might do some good. You might begin to undermine this 
unlucky infatuation of hers ; and I am sure, if her eyes were 
once opened, that the more she saw him,' the less she would like 
him.” 

“ I think, James,” said Mrs. Buckley, “that it becomes the 
duty of us, who have been so happy in our marriage, to prevent 
our good old vicar’s last days from being rendered miserable by, 
such a mesalliance as this. I am very fond of Mary ; but the 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


51 


old Vicar, my dear, has taken the place ot your father to 
me.” 

“He is like a second father to me too,” said the Major; 

but he wants a good many qualities that my OAvn father had. 
He hasn t his energy or determination. Why, if my father had 
been in his place, and such an ill-looking young dog as that came 
hanging ^ about the premises, my father would have laid his stick 
about his back. And it would he a good thing if somebody 
would do it now.” 

Such was Major Buckley’s opinion. 


CHAPTER VHl. 

THE VICAR HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE. 

“My dear,” said old Miss Thornton, that evening, “I have 
consulted Mrs. Buckley on the sleeves, and she is of opinion that 
they should be pointed.” 

“Do you think,” said Mary, “ that she thought much about 
the matter ? ’ ’ 

“ She promised to give the matter her earnest attention,” 
said Miss Thornton ; “so I suppose she did. Mrs. Buckley 
would never speak at random, if she once promised to give her 
real opinion.” 

“ No, I don’t think she would. Auntie, hut she is not very 
particular in her own dress.” 

“ She always looks like a thorough lady, my dear : Mrs. 
Buckley is a woman whom I could set before you as a model for 
imitation far sooner than myself.” 

“She is a duck, at all events,” said Mary; “and her 
husband is a darling.” 

Miss Thornton was too much shocked to say anything. 
To hear a young lady speak of a handsome military man as a 
“ darling,” went quite beyond her experience. She was con- 
sidering how much bread and water and backboard she would 
•have felt it her duty to give Lady Kate, or Lady Fanny, in old 
times, for such an expression, when the Vicar, who had been 
dozing,, woke up and said : — 

“ Bless us, whaV a night ! The equinoctial gales come back 
again. This rain will make up for the dry March with a 
vengeance ; I am glad I am safely housed before a good fire.” 


62 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


Unlucky words ! he drew nearer to the fire, and began rubbing 
bis knees ; be had given them about three rubs, when the door 
opened and the maid’s voice was beard ominous of evil. 

“ Thomas Jewel is worse, sir, and if you please his missis 
don’t expect he’ll last the night ; and could you just step 
up ? ” 

“Just stepping up,” was a pretty little euphemism for walking 
three long miles dead in the teeth of a gale of wind, with a 
fierce rushing tropical rain. One of the numerous tenders of 
the ship Jewel (74), had just arrived before the wind under bare 
poles, an attempt to set a rag of umbrella having ended in its 
being blown out of the holt-ropes, and the aforesaid tender 
Jewel was now in the vicarage harbour of refuge, reflecting what 
an awful job it would have in beating hack against the monsoon. 

“ Who has come with this message ? ” said the Vicar, entering 
the kitchen followed by Miss Thornton and Mary. 

“ Me, sir,” says a voice from the doorway. 

“ Oh, come in, will you,” said the Vicar ; “ it’s a terrible 
night, is it not ? ” 

“ Oh Loord ! ” said the voice in reply — intending the ejaculation 
for a very strong affirmative. And advancing towards the light, 
displayed a figure in a long brown great- coat, reaching to the 
ankles, and topped by some sort of head-dress, resembling very 
closely a small black carpet bag, tied on with a red cotton 
handkerchief. This was all that was visible, and the good 
Vicar stood doubting whether it was male or female, till catching 
sight of an immense pair of hob -nail boots peeping from the 
lower extremity of the coat, he made up his mind at once, and 
began : — 

“ My good hoy — ” 

There was a cackling laugh from under the carpet-hag, and 
a harsh grating voice replied : 

“ I be a gurl.” 

“ Dear me,” said the Vicar, “ then what do you dress yourself 
in that style for ? — So old Jewel is worse.” 

“ Us don’t think a ’ll live the night.” 

“ Is the doctor with him?” said the Vicar. 

“ The ’Talian’s with un.” 

By which he understood her to mean Dr. Mulhaus, all foreigners 
being considered to be Italians in Drumston. An idea they got, 
I take it, from the wandering organ men being of that nation. 

“Well,” said the Vicar, “I will start at once, and come. 
It’s a terrible night.” 

The owner of the great-coat assented with a fiendish cackle, and 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


5b 


departed. The Vicar, having been well wrapped up by his sister 
and daughter, departed also, with a last injunction from Miss 
Thornton to take care of himself. 

Easier said than done, such a night as this. A regular south- 
westerly gale, accompanied by a stinging, cutting rain, which made 
it almost impossible to look to windward. Earth and sky seemed 
mixed together, and each twig and bough sent a separate plaint 
upon the gale, indignant at seeing their fresh -acquired honours 
torn from them and scattered before the blast. 

The Vicar put his head down and sturdily walked against it. 
It was well for him that he knew every inch of the road, for his 
knowledge was needed now. There was no turn in the road after 
he had passed the church, but.it took straight away over the high 
ground up to Hawker’s farm on the woodlands. 

Old Jewel, whom he was going to see, had been a hind of 
Hawker’s for many years ; but about a twelvemonth before the 
present time he had left his service, partly on account of increasing 
infirmity, and partly in consequence of a violent quarrel with 
Madge. He was a man of indifferent character. He had been 
married once in his life, but his wife only lived a year, and left 
him with one son, who had likewise married and given to the 
world seven as barbarous, neglected, young savages as any in the 
parish. The old man, who was now lying on his deathbed, had been 
a sort of confidential man to old Hawker, retained in that capacity 
on account, the old man said once in his drink, of not having any 
wife to worm family affairs out of him. So it was generally 
believed by the village folks, that old Jewel was in possession of 
some fearful secrets (such as a murder or two, for instance, or a 
brace of forgeries), and that the Hawkers daren’t turn him out of 
the cottage where he lived for their lives. 

Perhaps some of these idle rumours may have floated through 
the Vicar’s brain as he fought forwards against the storm ; but if 
any did, they were soon dismissed again, and the good man’s 
thoughts carried into a fresh channel. And he was thinking 
what a fearful night this would be at sea, and how any ship could 
live against such a storm, when he came to a white gate, which 
led into the deep woods surrounding Hawker’s house, and in a 
recess of which lived old Jewel and his family. 

Now began the most difficult part of his journey. The broader 
road that led from the gate up to the Hawkers’ house was plainly 
perceptible, but the little path which turned up to the cottage was 
not so easily found, and when found, not easily kept on such a 
black wild night as this. But, at length, having hit it, he began 
to follow it with some difficulty, and soon beginning to descend 


54 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


rapidly, he caught sight of a light, and, at the same moment, 
heard the rushing of water. 

“Oh,” said he to himself, “the water is come down, and I 
shall have a nice job to get across it. Any people but the Jewels 
would have made some sort of a bridge by now ; hut they have 
been content with a fallen tree ever since the old bridge was 
carried away.” 

He scrambled down the steep hill side with great difficulty, and 
not without one or two nasty slips, which to a man of his age, 
was no trifle, hut at length stood trembling with exertion before a 
flooded brook, across which lay a fallen tree, dimly seen in the 
dark against the gleam of the rushing water. 

“ I must stand and steady my nerves a bit after that tumble,” 
he said, “before I venture over there. That’s the ‘Brig of 
Bread ’ with a vengeance. However, I never came to harm yet 
when I was after duty, so I’ll chance it.” 

The cottage stood just across the brook, and he halloed aloud 
for some one to come. After a short time the door opened, and 
a man appeared with a lantern. 

“ Who is there ? ” demanded Br. Mulhaus’ well-kno\vn voice. 
“Is it you. Vicar ? ” 

“Aye,” rejoined the other, “it’s me at present; but it won’t 
be long if I slip coming over that log. Here goes,” he said, as 
he steadied himself and crossed rapidly, while the Boctor held 
the light. “Ah,” he added, when he was safe across, “I knew 
I should get over all right.” 

“ You did not seem very certain about it just now,” said the 
Boctor. “However, I am sincerely glad you are come. I Imew 
no weather would stop you.” 

“Thank you, old friend,” said the Vicar; “and how is the 
patient ? ” 

“ Going fast. More in your line than mine. The man believes 
himself bewitched.” 

“ Not uncommon,” said the Vicar, “in these parts; they are 
always bothering me with some of that sort of nonsense.” 

They went in. Only an ordinary scene of poverty, dirt, and 
vice, such as exists to some extent, in every parish, in every 
country on the globe. Nothing more than that, and yet a 
sickening sight enough. 

A squalid, damp, close room, with the earthen floor sunk in 
many places and holding pools of water. The mother smoking in 
the chimney corner, the eldest daughter nursing an illegitimate 
child, and quarrelling with her mother in a coarse, angry tone. 
The children, ragged and hungry, fighting for the fireside. The 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


55 


father away, at some unlawful occupation probably, or sitting 
drinking his wages in an alehouse. That was what they saw, and 
what any man may see to-day for himself in his omi village, 
whether in England or Australia, that working man’s paradise. 
Drink, dirt, and sloth, my friends of the working orders, will 
produce the same effects all over the world. 

As they came in the woman of the house rose and curtseyed to 
the Vicar, but the eldest girl sat still and turned away her head. 
The Vicar, after saluting her mother, went gently up to her, and 
patting the baby’s cheek, asked her kindly how she did. The 
girl tried to answer him, but could only sob. She bent down her 
head again over the child, and began rocking it to and fro. 

“ You must bring it to be christened,” said the Vicar kindly. 
“ Can you come on Wednesday? ” 

“ Y^es, I’ll come,” she said with a sort of choke. And now the 
woman having lit a fresh candle, ushered them into the sick man’s 
room. 

“ Typhus and scarlatina ! ” said the Doctor. “ How this place 
smells after being in the air. He is sensible again, I think.” 

“ Quite sensible,” the sick man answered aloud. “ So you’ve 
come, Mr. Thornton ; I’m glad of it ; I’ve got a sad story to tell 
you ; but I’ll have vengeance if you do your duty. You see the 
state I am in ! ” 

“ Ague ! ” said the Vicar. 

“ And who gave it me ? ” 

“ Why, God sent it to you,” said the Vicar. “ All people 
living in a narrow wet valley among woodlands like this, must 
expect ague.” 

“ I tell you she gave it to me. I tell you she has overlooked 
me ; and all this doctor’s stuff is no use, unless you can say a 
charm as will undo her devil’s work.” 

“ My good friend,” said the Vicar, “you should banish such 
fancies from your mind, for you are in a serious position, and 
ought not to die in enmity with any one.” 

“Not die in enmity with her ? I’d never forgive her till she 
took off the spell.” 

“ Whom do you mean ? ” asked the Vicar. 

“ Why, that infernal witch, Madge, that lives with old Hawker,” 
said the man excitedly. “ That’s who I mean ! ” 

“ Why, what injury has she done you ? ” 

“ Bewitched me, I tell you ! Given me these shaking fits. 
She told me she would, when I left ; and so she has, to prevent 
my speaking. I might a spoke out anytime this year, only 
the old man kept me quiet with money ; but now it’s nigh too late I 


56 


THE KECOLLECTTONS OB’ 


‘‘ What might you have spoken about? ” asked the Vicar. 

“ Well, I’ll just relate the matter to you,” said the man, 
speaking fast and thick, “ and I’ll speak the truth. A twelve- 
month agone, this Madge and me had a tierce quarrel, and I 
miscalled her awful, and told her of some things she wasn’t aware 
I knew of; and then she said, ‘If ever a word of that escapes 
your lips. I’ll put such a spell on ye that your bones shall shake 
apart.’ Then I says. If you do, your bastard son shall swing.” 

“ Who do you mean by her bastard son ? ” 

“ Young George Hawker. He is not the son of old Mrs. 
Hawker. Madge was brought to bed of him a fortnight before 
her mistress ; and when she bore a still-born child, old Hawker 
and I buried it in the wood, and we gave Madge’s child to Mrs. 
Hawker, who never knew the difference before she died.” 

“ On the word of a dying man, is that true ? ” demanded the 
Vicar. 

“ On the word of a dying man that’s true, and this also. I 
says to Madge, ‘ Your boy shall swing, for I know enough to 
hang him.’ And she said, ‘ Where are your proofs ? ’ and I — 0 
Lord ! 0 Lord ! she’s at me again.” 

He sank down again in a paroxysm of shivering, and they got 
no more from him. Enough there was, however, to make the 
Vicar a very silent and thoughtful man, as he sat watching the 
sick man in the close stifling room. 

“ You had better go home, Vicar,” said the Doctor ; “ you will 
make yourself ill staying here. I do not expect another lucid 
interval.” 

“ No,” said the Vicar, “ I feel it my duty to stay longer. For 
my own sake too. What he has let out bears fearfully on my 
happiness. Doctor.” 

“ Yes, I can understand that, my friend, from what I have 
heard of the relations that exist between your daughter and that 
young man. You have been saved from a terrible misfortune, 
though at the cost, perhajDs, of a few tears, and a little temporary 
uneasiness.” 

“ I hope it may be as you say,” said the Vicar. “ Strange, only 
to-day Major Buckley was urging me to stop that acquaintance.” 

“ I should have ventured to do so too. Vicar, had I been as old 
a friend of yours as Major Buckley.” 

“ He is not such a very old friend,” said the Vicar ; “ only of 
two years’ standing, yet I seem to have known him ten.” 

At daybreak the man died, and made no sign. So as soon as 
they had satisfied themselves of the fact, they departed, and came 
out together into the clear morning air. The rain-clouds had 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


57 


broken, though when they liad scrunibled up out of the narrow 
little valley where the cottage stood, they found that the wind was 
still high and fierce, and that the sun was rising dimly through a 
yellow haze of driving scud. 

They stepped out briskly, revived by the freshness of all around, 
and had made about half the distance home, when they descried a 
horseman coming slowly towards them. It seemed an early time 
for any one to be abroad, and their surprise was increased at 
seeing that it was George Hawker returning home. 

“ Where can he have been so early ? ” said the Doctor. 

“So late, you mean,” said the Vicar; “he has not been 
home all night. Now I shall brace up my nerves and speak to 
him.” 

“ My good wishes go with you. Vicar,” said the Doctor, and 
walked on, while the other stopped to speak with George Hawker. 

“ Good morning, Mr. Thornton. You are early a-foot, sir.” 

“ Yes, I have been sitting up all night with old Jewel. He is 
dead.” 

“ Is he indeed, sir ? ” said Hawker. “ He won’t be much loss, 
sir, to the parish. A sort of happy release, one may say, for 
every one but himself.’’ 

“ Can I have the pleasure of a few words with you, Mr. 
Hawker ? ” 

“Surely, sir,” said he, dismounting. “Allow me to walk a 
little on the way back with you ? ” 

“What I have to say, Mr. Hawker,” said the Vicar, “ is very 
short, and, I fear, also very disagreeable to all parties. I am 
going to request you to discontinue your visits to my house 
altogether, and, in fact, drop our acquaintance.” 

“ This is very sudden, sir,” said Haw^ker. “Am I to under- 
stand, sir, that you cannot be induced by any conduct of mine to 
reconsider this decision ? ” 

“ You are to understand that such is the case, sir.” 

“ And this is final, Mr. Thornton ? ” 

“ Quite final, I assure you,” said the Vicar ; “ nothing on earth 
should make me flinch from my decision.” 

“This is very unfortunate, sir,” said George. “For I had 
reason to believe that you rather encouraged my visits than 
otherwise.” 

“ I never encouraged them. It is true I permitted them. But 
since then circumstances have come to my ears which render 
it imperative that you should drop all communication with the 
members of my family, more especially, to speak plainly, with my 
daughter.” 


58 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“At least, sir,” said George, “let me know what charge you 
bring against me.” 

“ I make no charges of any sort,” replied the Vicar. “All I 
say is, that I wish the intercourse between you and my daughter 
to cease ; and I consider, sir, that when I say that, it ought to be 
sufficient. I conceive that I have the right to say so much without 
question.” 

“ I think you are unjust, sir ; I do, indeed,” said George. 

“ I may have been unjust, and I may have been weak, in allowing 
an intimacy (which I do not deny, mind you) to spring up between 
my daughter and yourself. But I am not unjust now, when I 
require that it should cease. I begin to be just.” 

“ Do you forbid me your house, sir ? ” 

“ I forbid you my house, sir. Most distinctly. And I wish 
you good-day.” 

There was no more to be said on either side. George stood 
beside his horse, after the Vicar had left him, till he was fairly 
out of earshot. And then, with a fierce oath, he said, — 

“ You puritanical old humbug, ITl do you yet. You’ve heard 
about Nell and her cursed brat. But the daughter ain’t always 
the same way of thinking with the father, old man.” 

The Vicar walked on, glad enough to have got the interview 
over, till he overtook the Doctor, who was walking slowly till he 
came up. He felt as though the battle was gained already, though 
he still rather dreaded a scene with Mary. 

“ How have you sped, friend ? ” asked the Doctor. “ Have 
you given the young gentleman his congee ? ” 

“ I have,” he replied. “ Doctor, now half the work is done, I 
feel what a culpable coward I have been not to do it before. I 
have been deeply to blame. I never should have allowed him to 
come near us. Surely, the girl will not be such a fool as to 
regret the loss of such a man. I shall tell her all I know about 
him, and after that I can do no more. No more ? I never had 
her confidence. She has always had a life apart from mine. The 
people in the village, all so far below us in every way, have been 
to me acquaintances, and only that; but they have been her 
world, and she has seen no other. She is a kind, afiectionate 
daughter, but she would be as good a daughter to any of the 
farmers round as she is to me. She is not a lady. That is the 
truth. God help the man who brings up a daughter without a 
wife.” 

“ You do her injustice, my friend,” said the Doctor. “ I 
understand what you mean, but you do her injustice. All the 
female society she has ever seen, before Mrs. Buckley and your 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


59 


sister came here, was of a rank inferior to herself, and she has 
taken her impressions from that society to a great extent. But 
still she is a lady ; compare her to any of the other girls in the 
parish, and you will see the difference.” 

“Yes, yes, that is true,” said the Vicar. “ You must think 
me a strange man to speak so plainly about my own daughter. 
Doctor, and to you, too, whom I have known so short a time. 
But one must confide in somebody, and I have seen your dis- 
cretion manifested so often that I trust you.” 

They had arrived opposite the Vicar’s gate, but the Doctor, 
resisting all the Vicar’s offers of breakfast, declined to go in. 
He walked homeward toward his cottage-lodgings, and as he went 
he mused to himself somewhat in this style, — 

“ What a good old man that is. And yet how weak. I used to 
say to myself when I first knew him, what a pity that a man with 
such a noble intellect should be buried in a country village, a 
pastor to a lot of ignorant hinds. And yet he is fit for nothing 
else, with all his intelligence, and all his learning. He has no go 
in him, — no back to his head. Contrast him with Buckley, and 
see the difference. Now Bucldey, without being a particularly 
clever man, sees the right thing, and goes at it through fire and 
water. But our old Vicar sees the right, and leaves it to take 
care of itself. He can’t manage his own family even. That girl 
is a fine girl, a very fine girl. A good deal of character about 
her. But her animal passions are so strong that she would be a 
Tartar for any one to manage. She will be too much for the 
Vicar. She will marry that man in the end. And if he don’t 
use her properly, she’ll hate him as much as she loves him now. 
She is more like an Italian than an English girl. Hi ! there’s a 
noble Rhamnea ! ” 

The Vicar went into his house, and found no one up but the 
maids, who were keeping that saturnalia among the household 
gods, which, I am given to understand, goes on in every well- 
regulated household before the lords of the creation rise from 
their downy beds. I have never seen this process myself, but I 
am informed, by the friend of my heart, who looked on it once 
for five minutes, and then fled, horror struck, that the first act 
consists in turning all the furniture upside down, and beating it 
with brooms. Further than this, I have no information. If any 
male eye has penetrated these awful secrets beyond that, let the 
owner of that eye preserve a decent silence. There are some 
things that it is better not to know. Only let us hope, brother, 
that you and I may always find ourselves in a position to lie in bed 
till it is all over. In Australia, it may be worth while to remark. 


00 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


this custom, with many other religious observances, has fallen 
into entire desuetude. 

The Vicar was very cross this morning. He had been sitting 
up all night, which was bad, and he had been thinking these last 
few minutes that he had made a fool of himself, by talking so 
freely to the Doctor about his private affairs, which was worse. 
Nothing irritated the Vicar’s temper more than the feeling of 
having been too free and communicative with people who did not 
care about him, a thing he was very apt to do. And, on this 
occasion, he could not disguise from himself that he had been led 
into talking about his daughter to the Doctor, in a way which he 
characterised in his own mind as being “ indecent.” 

As I said, he was cross. And anything in the way of clearing 
up or disturbance always irritated him, though he generally con- 
cealed it. But there was a point at which his vexation always 
took the form of a protest, more or less violent. And that point 
was determined by any one meddling with his manuscript sermons. 

So, on this unlucky morning, in spite of fresh-lit fires smoking 
in his face, and fenders in dark passages throwing him headlong 
into lurking coalscuttles, he kept his temper like a man, until 
coming into his study, he found his favourite discourse on the 
sixth seal lying on the floor by the window, his lectures on the 
119th Psalm on the hearthrug, and the maid fanning the fire with 
his chef d'mivre, the Waterloo thanksgiving. 

Then, I am sorry to say, he lost his temper. Instead of calling 
the girl by her proper name, he addressed her as a distinguished 
Jewish lady, a near relation of King Ahab, and, snatching the 
sermon from her hand, told her to go and call Miss Mary, or he’d 
lay his stick about her back. 

The girl was frightened — she had never seen her master in this 
state of mind before. So she ran out of the room, and, having 
fetched Mary, ensconced herself outside the door to hear what 
was the matter. 

Mary tripped into the room looking pretty and fresh. “ Why, 
father,” she said, “ you have been up all night. I have ordered 
you a cup of coffee. How is old Jewel ? ” 

“ Dead,” said the Vicar. ‘‘ Never mind him. Mary, I want 
to speak to you, seriously, about something that concerns the 
happiness of your whole life.” 

“ Father,” she said, “ you frighten me. Let me get you your 
coffee before you begin, at all events.” 

“ Stay where you are, I order you,” said the father. “ I will 
have no temporising until the matter grows cold. I will speak 
now ; do you hear ? Now, listen.” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


61 


She was subdued, and knew what was coming. She sat down, 
and waited. Had he looked in her face, instead of in the fire, he 
would have seen an expression there which he would little have 
liked — a smile of obstinacy and self-will. 

“ I am not going to mince matters, and heat about the hush, 
Mary,” he began. “ AVhat I say I mean, and will have it 
attended to. You are very intimate with young Hawker, and that 
intimacy is very displeasing to me.” 

“ Well ? ” she said. 

“ Well,” he answered. “ I say it is not well. I will not have 
him here.” 

“ You are rather late, father,” she said. “ He has had the 
run of this house these six months. You should have spoken 
before.” 

“ I speak now, miss,” said the Vicar, succeeding in working 
himself into a passion, “ and that is enough. I forbid him the 
house, now ! ” 

“ You had better tell him so, father. I won’t.” 

“ I daresay you won’t,” said the A^icar. “ But I have told 
him so already this morning.” 

“ You have ! ” she cried. “ F'ather, you had no right to do 
that. You encouraged him here. And now my love is given, 
you turn round and try to break my heart.” 

“ I never encouraged him. You all throw that in my face. 
You have no natural affection, girl. I always hated the man. 
And now I have heard things about him sufficient to bar him from 
any honest man’s house.” 

“ Unjust ! ” she said. “ I will never believe it.” 

“I daresay you won’t,” said the Vicar. “ Because you don’t 
want to. You are determined to make my life miserable. There 
was Jim Stockhridge. Such a noble, handsome, gentlemanly 
young fellow, and nothing would please you hut to drive him wild, 
till he left the country. Now, go away, and mind what I have 
said. You mean to break my heart, I see.” 

She turned as she was going out. “Father,” she said, “is 
James Stockhridge gone? ” 

“ Yes ; gone. Sailed a fortnight ago. And all your doing. 
Poor boy, I wonder where he is now.” 

Where is he now ? Under the cliffs of Madeira. Standing on 
the deck of a brave ship, beneath a rustling cloud of canvas, 
watching awe-struck that noble island, like an aerial temple, brown 
in the lights, blue in the shadows, floating between a sapphire sea 
and an azure sky. Far aloft in the air is Ruivo, five thousand 
feet overhead, fathe.r of the great ridges and sierras that run down 


62 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


jagged and abrupt, till they end in wild surf-washed promontories. 
He is watching a mighty glen that pierces the mountain, dark wi th 
misty shadows. He is watching the waterfalls that stream froim 
among the vineyards into the sea below, and one long whilte 
monastery, perched up among the crags above the highway of tjiie 
world. 

Borne upon the full north wind, the manhood and intelligerice 
of Europe goes past, day by day, in white -winged ships. Alnd 
above all, unheeding, century after century, the old monks hfive 
vegetated there, saying their masses, and ringing their ch^l.pel 
bells, high on the windy cliff. * 


CHAPTER IX. i 

X 

WHEN THE KYE CAME HAME. 

And when Mary had left the room, the Vicar sat musing bel'ore 
the fire in his study. “ Well,” said he to himself, “ she tool'?; it 
quieter than I thought she would. Now, I can’t blame myself. » I 
think I have shown her that I am determined, and she seeims 
inclined to be dutiful. Poor dear girl, I am sorry for her. Th(3re 
is no doubt she has taken a fancy to this handsome young scauip. 
But she must get over it. It can’t be so very serious as yet. Wt 
all events I have done my duty, though I can’t help saying that I 
wish I had spoken before things went so far.” 

The maid looked in timidly, and told him that breakfast Was* 
ready. He went into the front parlour, and there he found lyis 
sister making tea. She looked rather disturbed, and, as the Vic^r 
kissed her, he asked her “ where was Mary ? ” \ 

“ She is not well, brother,” she answered. “ She is going tc. 
stay up-stairs ; I fear something has gone wrong with her.” ( 

“ She and I had some words this morning,” answered he, “ anci 
that happens so seldom, that she is a little upset, that is all.” \ 
“ I hope there is nothing serious, brother,” said Miss Thornton. ( 
“ No ; I have only been telling her that she must give up 
receiving George Hawker here. And she seems to have taken a 
sort of fancy to his society, which might have grown to something 
more serious. So I am glad I spoke in time.” 

“ My dear brother, do you think you have spoken in time ? I 
have always imagined that you had determined, for some reasp^ 
which I was not master of, that she should look on Mr. Ha^er 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


ea 

as her future husband. I am afraid you will have trouble. Mary 
IS self-willed.” 

Mary was very self-willed. She refused to come downstairs all 
day, and, when he was sitting down to dinner, he sent up for her. 
She sent him for an answer, that she did not want any dinner, and 
that she was going to stay where she was. 

The Vicar ate his dinner notwithstanding. He was vexed, but, 
on the whole, felt satisfied with himself. This sort of thing, he 
said to himself, was to he expected. She would get over it in 
time. He hoped that the poor girl would not neglect her meals, 
and get thin. He might have made himself comfortable if he had 
seen her at the cold chicken in the back kitchen. 

She could not quite make the matter out. She rather fancied 
that her father and Hawker had had some quarrel, the efiects of 
which would wear off, and that all would come hack to its old 
course. She thought it strange too that her father should he so 
different from his usual self, and this made her uneasy. One 
thing she was determined on, not to give up her lover, come what 
would. So far in life she had always had her own way, and she 
would have it now. All things considered, she thought that sulks 
would he her game. So sulks it was. To be carried on until the 
Vicar relented. 

She sat up in her room till it was evening. Twice during the 
day her aunt had come up, and the first time she had got rid of 
her under pretence of headache, hut the second time she was 
forced in decency to admit her, and listen entirely unedified to a 
long discourse, proving, beyond power of contradiction, that it 
was the duty of every young Englishwoman to he guided entirely 
by her parents in the choice of a partner for life. A: td how that 
Lady Kate, as a fearful judgment on her for marrying a captain of 
artillery against the wishes of her noble relatives, was now 
expiating her crimes on 400A a-year, and when she might have 
married a duke. 

Lady Kate was Miss Thornton’s awful example,” her “naughty 
girl.” She served to point many a moral of the old lady’s. But 
Lady Fanny, her sister, was always represented as the pattern of 
all Christian virtues — who had crowned the hopes of her family 
and well-wishers by marrying a gouty marquis of sixty-three, with 
fifty thousand a-year. On this occasion, Mary struck the old lady 
dumb — “ knocked her cold,” our American cousins would say — 
by announcing that she considered Lady Fanny to he a fool, but 
that Lady Kate seemed to be a girl of some spirit. So Miss 
Thornton left her to her ovii evil thoughts, and, as evening began 
to fall, Mary put on her bonnet, and went out for a walk. 


64 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


Out by the back door, and round through the shrubbery, so that 
she gained the front gate unperceived from the windows ; but ere 
she reached it she heard the latch go, and found herself face to 
face with a man. 

He was an immensely tall man, six foot at least. His long 
heavy limbs loosely hung together, and his immense broad 
shoulders slightly rounded. In features he was hardly handsome, 
but a kindly pleasant looking face made ample atonement for want 
of beauty. He was dressed in knee breeches, and a great blue 
coat, with brass buttons, too large even for him, was topped by a 
broad-brimmed beaver hat, with fur on it half an inch long. In 
age, this man was about five-and-twenty, and well known he was 
to all the young fellows round there for skill in all sporting 
matters, as weU as for his kind-heartedness and generosity. 

When he saw Maiy pop out of the little side walk right upon 
him, he leaned back against the gate and burst out laughing. No, 
hardly “burst out.” His laughter seemed to begin internally 
and silently, till, after one or two rounds, it shook the vast fabric 
of his chest beyond endurance, and broke out into so loud and 
joyous a peal that the blackbira fled, screeching indignantly, from 
the ivy-tree behind him. 

“ What ! Thomas Troubridge,” said Mary. “ My dear cousin, 
how are you ? Now, don’t stand laughing there like a great gaby, 
but come and shake hands. What on earth do you see to laugh 
at in me ? ” 

“ Nothing, my cousin Poll, nothing,” he replied. “ You know 
that is my way of expressing approval. And you look so pretty 
standing there in the shade, that I would break any man’s neck 
who didn’t applaud. Shake hands, says you. I’ll shake hands 
with a vengeance.” So saying, he caught her in his arms, and 
covered her with kisses. 

“You audacious,” she exclaimed, when she writhed herself free. 
“ I’ll never come within arm’s-length of you again. How dare 
you?” 

“ Only cousinly affection, I assure you. Poll. Bather more 
violent than usual at finding myself back in Drumston. But 
entirely cousinly.” 

“ Where have you been, then, Tom ? ” she asked. 

“ Why, to London, to be sure. Give us ano ” 

“ You keep off, sir, or you’ll catch it. What took you there ? ” 

“ Went to see Stockbridge and Hamlyn off.” 

“ Then, they are gone ? ” she asked. 

“ Gone, sure enough. I was the last friend they’U see for 
many a long year.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


65 


‘ ‘ How did Stockbridge look ? was lie pretty brave ? ” * 

“ Pretty well. Braver than I was. Mary, my girl, why didn’t 
ye marry him ? ” 

“What — you are at me with the rest, are you ? ” she answered. 
“Why, because he was a gaby, and you’re another; and I wouldn’t 
marry either of you to save your lives — now then ! ” 

“ Do you mean to say you would not have me, if I asked you ? 
Pooh! pooh! I know better than that, you know.” And again 
the shrubbery rang with his laughter. 

“ Now, go in, Tom, and let me get out,” said Mary. “ I say, 
Tom, dear, don’t say you saw me. I am going out for a turn, and 
I don’t want them to know it.” 

Tom twisted up his great face into a mixture of mystery, admira- 
tion, wonder, and acquiescence, and, having opened the gate for 
her, went in. 

But Mary walked quickly down a deep narrow lane, overarched 
with oak, and melodious with the full rich notes of the thrush, till 
she saw down the long vista, growing now momentarily darker, the 
gleaming of a ford where the road crossed a brook. 

Not the brook where the Vicar and the Major went fishing. 
Quite a different sort of stream, although they were scarcely half 
a mile apart, and joined just below. Here all the soil was yellow 
clay, and, being less fertile, was far more densely wooded than any 
of the red country. The hills were very abrupt, and the fields but 
sparely scattered among the forest land. The stream itself, where 
it crossed the road, flowed murmuring over a bed of loose blue 
slate pebbles, but both above and below this place forced its way, 
almost invisible, through a dense oak wood, deeply tangled with 
undergrowth. 

A stone foot-bridge spanned the stream, and having reached this, 
it seemed as if she had come to her journey’s end. For leaning 
on the rail she began looking into the water below, though starting 
and looking round at every sound. 

She was waiting for some one. A pleasant place this to wait in. 
So dark, so hemmed in with trees, and the road so little used ; 
spring was early here, and the boughs were getting quite dense 
already. How pleasant to see the broad red moon go up behind 
the feathery branches, and listen to the evensong of the thrush, 
just departing to roost, and leaving the field clear for the woodlark 
all night. There were a few sounds from the village, a lowing 
of cows, and the noise of the boys at play ; but they were so 
tempered down by the distance, that they only added to the evening 
harmony. 

There is another sound now. Horses’ feet approaching rapidly 

6 


66 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


fwm the side opposite to that by which she has come; and soon 
a horseman comes in sight, coming quickly down the hill. When 
he sees her he breaks into a gallop, and only pulls up when he is 
at the side of the brook below her. 

This is the man she was expecting — George Hawker. Ah, 
Vicar ! how useless is your authority when lovers have such intel- 
ligence as this. It were better they should meet in your parlour, 
under your own eye, than here, in the budding spring-time, in this 
quiet spot under the darkening oaks. 

Hawker spoke first. “I guessed,” he said, “that it was just 
possible you might come out to-night. Come down off the bridge, 
my love, and let us talk together while I hang up the horse.” 

So as he tied the horse to a gate, she came down off the bridge. 
He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Now, my PoU,” said 
he, “ I know what you are going to begin talking about.” 

“I daresay you do, George,” she answered. “You and my 
father have quarrelled.” 

“ The quarrel has been all on one side, my love,” he said ; 
“ he has got some nonsense into his head, and he told me when I 
met him this morning, that he would never see me in his house 
again.” 

“What has he heard, George? it must be something very 
shocking to change him like that. Do you know what it is ? ” 

“Perhaps I do,” he said; “but he has no right to visit my 
father’s sins on me. He hates me, and he always did ; and he has 
been racking his brains to find out something against me. That 
rascally German doctor has found him an excuse, and so he throws 
in my teeth, as fresh discovered, what he must have kno^vn years 
ago.” 

“ I don’t think that, George. I don’t think he would be so 
deceitful.” 

“ Not naturally he wouldn’t, I know ; but he is under the thumb 
of that doctor ; and you know how he hates me — If you don’t I 
do.” 

“ I don’t know why Dr. Mulhaus should hate you, George.” 

“ I do, though; that sleeky dog Stockbridge, who is such a 
favourite with him, has poisoned his mind, and all because he 
wanted you and your money, and because you took up with me 
instead of him.” 

“ Well now,” said Mary ; “ don’t go on about him — he is gone, 
at all events ; but you must tell me what this is that my father 
has got against you.” 

“ I don’t like to. I tell you it is against my father, not me.” 

“ Well I she answered ; “it it was any one but me, perhaps, 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


67 


you ought not to tell it ; but you ought to have no secrets from 
me, George — I have kept none from you.” 

‘‘Well, my darling, I will tell you then; you know Madge, at 
our place ? ” 

“ Yes ; I have seen her.” 

“ Well, it’s about her. She and my father live together like 
man and wife, though they ain’t married ; and the Vicar must 
have known that these years, and yet now he makes it an excuse 
for getting rid of me.” 

“ I always thought she was a had woman,” said Mary ; “ but 
you are wrong about my father. He never knew it till now I am 
certain ; and of course, you know, he naturally won’t have me go 
and live in the house with a bad woman.” 

“Does he think then, or do you think,” replied George, with 
virtuous indignation, “that I would have thought of taking you 
there ? No, I’d sooner have taken you to America ! ” 

“ Well, so I believe, George.” 

“This won’t make any difference in you, Mary? No, I 
needn’t ask it, you wouldn’t have come here to meet me to-night 
if that had been the case.” 

“ It ought to make a difference, George,” she replied ; “ I am 
afraid I oughtn’t to come out here and see you, when my father 
don’t approve of it.” 

“ But you will come, my little darling, for all that; ” he said. 
“ Not here though — the devil only knows who may be loitering 
round here. Half a dozen pair of lovers a night perhaps — no, 
meet me up in the croft of a. night. I am often in at Gosford’s of 
an evening, and I can see your window from there, you put a 
candle in the right-hand corner when you want to see me, and I’ll 
be down in a very few minutes. I shall come every evening and 
watch.” 

“ Indeed,” she said, “ I won’t do anything of the sort ; at 
least, unless I have something very particular to say. Then, 
indeed, I might do such a thing. Now I must go home or they 
will be missing me,” 

“ Stay a minute, Mary,” said he ; “ you just listen to me. 
They will, some of them, be trying to take my character away. 
You won’t throw me off without hearing my defence, dear Mary, I 
know you won’t. Let me hear what lies they tell of me, and 
don’t you condemn me unheard because I come from a had house. 
Tell me that you’ll give me a chance of clearing myself with you, 
my girl, and I’ll go home in peace and wait.” 

What girl could resist the man she loved so truly, when he 
pleaded so well ? With his arm about her waist, and his hand- 


(58 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


some face bent over her, lit up with what she took to be love. 
Not she, at all events. She drew the handsome face do^vn towards 
her, and as she kissed him fervently, said : 

“ I will never believe what they say of you, love. I should die 
if I lost you. I will stay by you through evil report and good 
report. What is all the world to me without you ? ” 

And she felt what she said, and meant it. What though the 
words in which she spoke were borrowed from the trashy novels 
she was always reading — they were true enough for all that. 
George saw that they were true, and saw also that now was the 
time to speak about what he had been pondering over all day. 

“ And suppose, my own love,” he said ; “ that your father 
should stay in his present mind, and not come round ? ” 

“ Well ! ” she said. 

“ What are we to do ? ” he asked ; “ are we to be always 
content with meeting here and there, when we dare ? Is there 
nothing further ? ’ ’ 

“ What do you mean ? ” she said in a whisper. “ What shall 
we do ? ” 

“ Can’t you answer that ? ” he said softly. “ Try.” 

“No, I can’t answer. You tell me what.” 

“Fly!” he said in her ear. “Fly, and get married, that’s 
what I mean.” 

“Oh I that’s what you mean,” she replied. “ Oh, George, I 
should not have courage for that.” 

“ I think you will, my darling, when the time comes. Go home 
and think about it.” 

He kissed her once more, and then she fan away homeward 
through the dark. But she did not run far before she began to 
walk slower and think. 

“Fly with him,” she thought. “ Run away and get married. 
What a delightfully wild idea. Not to be entertained for a 
moment, of course, but still what a pleasant notion. She meant 
to marry George in the end ; why not that way as well as any 
other ? She thought about it again and again, and the idea 
grew more familiar. At all events, if her father should continue 
obstinate, here was a way out of the difficulty. He would be 
first, but when he found he could not help himself he 
would come round, and then they would all be happy. She would 
shut her ears to anything they said against George. She could 
not believe it. She would not. He should be her husband, 
come what niight. She would dissemble, and keep her father’s 
suspicions quiet. More, she would speak lightly of George, and 
make them believe she did not care for him. But most of all, 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


69 


she would worm from her father everything she could about him. 
Her curiosity was aroused, and she fancied, perhaps, George had 
not told her all the truth. Perhaps he might he entangled with 
some other woman. She would find it all out if she could.” 

So confusedly thinking she reached home, and approaching the 
door, heard the noise of many voices in the parlour. There was 
evidently company, and in her present excited state nothing would 
suit her better ; so sliding up to her room, and changing her dress 
a little, she came down and entered the parlour. 

“Behold,” cried the Doctor, as she entered the room, “the 
evening-star has arisen at last. My dear young lady, we have 
been loudly lamenting your absence and indisposition.” 

“ I have been listening to your lamentations. Doctor,” she 
replied. “ They were certainly loud, and from the frequent bursts 
of laughter, I judged they were getting hysterical, so I came 
down.” 

There was quite a party assembled. The Vicar and Major 
Buckley were talking earnestly together. Troubridge and the 
Doctor were side by side, while next the fire was Mrs. Buckley, 
with young Sam asleep on her lap and Miss Thornton sitting 
quietly beside her. 

Having saluted them all, Mary sat down by Mrs. Buckley, and 
began talking to her. Then the conversation flowed back into 
the channel it had been following before her arrival. 

“ I mean to say. Vicar,” said the Major, “ that it would be 
better to throw the four packs into two. Then you would have 
less squabbling and bickering about the different boundaries, and 
you would kill the same number of hares with half the dogs.” 

“ And you would throw a dozen men out of work, sir,” replied 
the Vicar, “ in this parish and the next, and that is to be con- 
sidered ; and about half the quantity of meat and horseflesh would 
be consumed, which is another consideration. I tell you I believe 
things are better as they are.” 

“ I hear they got a large stern-cabin ; did they, Mr Trou- 
bridge ? ” said the Doctor. “ I hope they’ll be comfortable. They 
should have got more amidships if they could. They will be sick 
the longer in their position.” 

“Poor boys!” said Troubridge; “they’ll be more heart-sick 
than stomach-sick, I expect. They’d half-repented before they 
sailed.” 

Mary sat down by Mrs. Buckley, and had half an hour’s agree- 
able conversation with her, till they all rose to go. Mrs. Buckley 
was surprised at her sprightliness and good spirits, for she had 
expected to find her in tears. The Doctor had met the Major in 


70 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


the morning, and told him what had passed the night before, so 
Mrs. Buckley had come in to cheer Mary up for the loss of her 
lover, and to her surprise found her rather more merry than 
usual. This made the good lady suspect at once that Mary did 
not treat the matter very seriously, or else was determined to defy 
her father, which, as Mrs. Buckley reflected, she was perfectly 
able to do, being rich in her own right, and of age. So when she 
was putting on her shawl to go home, she kissed Mary, and said 
kindly, — • 

“ My love, I hope you will always honour and obey your father, 
and I am sure you will always, under all circumstances, remember 
that I am your true friend. Good night.” 

And having bidden her good night, Mary went in. The Doctor 
was gone with the Major, but Tom Troubridge sat still before the 
fire, and as she came in was just finishing off one of his thundering 
fits of laughter at something that the Vicar had said. 

“My love,” said the Vicar, “I am so sorry 3^ou have been 
poorly, though you look better to-night. Your dear aunt has 
been to Tom’s room, so there is nothing to do, but to sit down 
and talk to us.” 

“Why, cousin Tom,” she said, laughing, “I had quite forgot 
you ; at least, quite forgot you were going to stay here. Why, 
what a time it is since I saw you.” 

“Isn’t it?” he replied; “such a very long time. If I re- 
member right, we met last out at the gate. Let’s see. How 
long was that ago ? ” 

“ You ought to remember,” she replied ; “you’re big enough. 
Well, good night. I’m going to bed.” 

She went to her room, but not to bed. She sat in the window, 
looking at the stars, pale in the full moonlight, wondering. Won- 
dering what George was doing. Wondering whether she would 
listen to his audacious proposal. And wondering, lastly, what on 
earth her father would say if she did. 


CHAPTER X. 

IN WHICH WE SEE A GOOD DEAL OF MISCHIEF BREWING. 

A MONTH went on, and May was well advanced. The lanes had 
grown dark and shadowy with their summer bravery ; the banks 
were a rich mass of verdure once more, starred with wild-rose and 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


71 


eglantine,; and on the lesser woodland stream, the king fern was 
again concealing the channel with brilliant golden fronds ; while 
brown bare thorn-thickets, through which the wind had whistled 
savagely all winter, were now changed into pleasant bowers, where 
birds might build and sing. 

A busy month this had been for the Major. Fishing every day, 
and pretty near all day, determined, as he said, to make the most 
of it, for fear it should be his last year. There was a beaten path 
worn through the growing grass all down the side of the stream by 
his sole exertions ; and now the May-fly was coming, and there 
would be no more fishing in another week, so he worked harder 
than ever. Mrs. Buckley used to bring down her son and heir, 
and sit under an oak by the river-side, sewing. Pleasant, long 
days they were when dinner would be brought down to the old 
tree, and she would spend the day there, among tlie long meadow- 
grass, purple and yellow with flowers, bending under the soft west 
wind. Pleasant to hear the corncrake by the hedge-side, or the 
moorhen in the water. But pleasantest of all was the time when 
her husband, tired of fishing, would come and sit beside her, and 
the boy, throwing his lately-petted flowers to the wind, would run 
crowing to the spotted beauties which his father had laid out for 
him on the grass. 

The Vicar was busy in his garden, and the Doctor was often 
helping him, although the most of his time was spent in natural 
history, to which he seemed entirely devoted. One evening they 
had been employed rather later than usual, and the Doctor was 
just gone, when the Vicar turned round and saw that his sister 
was come out, with her basket and scissors, to gather a fresh 
bouquet for the drawing-room. 

So he went to join her, and as he approached her he admired 
her with an affectionate admiration. Such a neat, trim figure, 
with the snow-white handkerchief over her head, and her white 
garden gloves ; what a contrast to Mary, he thought ; “ Both 
good of their sort, though,” he added. 

“Good evening, brother,” began Miss Thornton. “Was not 
that Dr. Mulhaus went from you just now ? ” 

“ Yes, my dear.” 

“ You had letters of introduction to Dr. Mulhaus, when he came 
to reside in this village ? ” asked Miss Thornton. 

“ Yes ; Lord C , whom I knew at Oxford, recommended me 

to him.’.’ 

“ His real name, I daresay, is not Mulhaus. Do you know what 
•his real name is, brother ? ” 

How very awkward plain plump questions of this kind are. 


72 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


The Vicar would have liked to answer “No,” hut he could not 
tell a lie. He was also a very bad hand at prevaricating ; so with 
a stammer, he said “ Yes ! ” 

“ So do I ! ” said Miss Thornton. 

“ Good Lord, my dear, how did you find it out ? ” 

“ I recognised him the first instant I saw him, and was struck 
dumb. I was very discreet, and have never said a word even to 
you till now ; and, lately, I have been thinking that you might 
know, and so I thought I would sound you.” 

“ I suppose you saw him when you were with her ladyship in 
Paris, in ’14 ? ” 

“Yes; often,” said Miss Thornton. “He came to the house 
several times. How well I remember the last. The dear girls and 
I were in the conservatory in the morning, and all of a sudden we 
heard the door^ thrown open, and two men coming towards us 
talking from the* breakfast-room. We could not see them for the 
plants, but when we heard the voice of one of them, the girls got 
into a terrible flutter, and I was very much frightened myself. 
However, there was no escape, so we came round the corner on 
them as bold as we could, and there was this Dr. Mulhaus, as we 
call him, walking with him.” 

“With him ? — with who ? ” 

“ The Emperor Alexander, my dear, whose voice we had recog- 
nised ; I thought you would have known whom I meant.” 

“My dear love,” said the Vicar, “I hope you reflect how 
sacred that is, and what a good friend I should lose if the slightest 
hint as to who he was, were to get among the gentry round. You 
don’t think he has recognised you ? ” 

“ How is it likely, brother, that he would remember an English 
governess, whom he never saw but three times, and never looked 
at once ? I have often wondered whether the Major recognised him. ’ ’ 
“ No ; Buckley is a Peninsular man, and although at Waterloo, 
never went to Paris. Lans — Mulhaus, I mean, was not present at 
Waterloo. So they never could have met. My dear discreet old 
sister, what tact you have ! I have often said to myself, when I 
have seen you and he together, ‘ If she only knew who he was ; ’ — 
and to think of your knowing all the time. Ha ! ha ! ha ! That’s 
very good.” 

“ I have lived long where tact is required, my dear brother. 
See, there goes young Mr. Hawker ! ” 

“I’d sooner see him going home than coming here. Now, I’d 
go out for a turn in the lanes, but I know I should meet half a 
dozen couples courting, as they call it. Bah ! So I’ll stay in the 
garden.” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


73 


The Vicar was right about the lanes being full of lovers. Never 
a vista that you looked down but what you saw a ghostly pair, 
walking along side by side. Not arm in arm, you know. The man 
has his hands in his pockets, and walks a few feet off the woman. 
They never speak to one another — I think I don’t go too far in 
saying that. I have met them and overtaken them, and come 
sharp round corners on to them, but I never heard them speak to 
one another. I have asked the young men themselves whether 
they ever said anything to their sweethearts, and those young men 
have answered, “ No ; that they didn’t know as they did.” So 
that I am inclined to believe that they are contented with that 
silent utterance of the heart which is so superior to the silly 
whisperings one hears on dark ottomans in drawing-rooms. 

But the Vicar had a strong dislike to lovers’ walks. He was a 
practical man, and had studied parish statistics for some years, so 
that his opinion is entitled to respect. He used to ask, why an 
honest girl should not receive her lover, at her father’s Imuse, or in 
broad daylight, and many other impertinent questions which we 
won’t go into, hut which many a west-country parson has asked 
before, and never got an answer to. 

Of all pleasant places in the parish, surely one of the pleasantest 
for a meeting of this kind was the old oak at the end of Hawker’s 
plantation, where George met Nelly a night we know of. So quiet 
and lonely, and such pleasant glimpses down long oaken glades, 
with a bright carpet of springing fern. Surely there will be a couple 
here this sweet May evening. 

So there is ! Walking this way too ! George Hawker is one 
of them ; but we can’t see who the other is. Who should it be 
hut Mary, though, with whom he should walk, with his arm round 
her waist talking so aff’ectionately. But see, she raises her head. 
Why ! that is not Mary. That is old Jewel’s dowdy, handsome, 
brazen-faced granddaughter. 

“ Now I’m going home to supper. Miss Jenny,” he says. “ So 
you pack off, or you’ll have your amiable mother asking after 
you. By-the-bye, your sister’s going to he married, ain’t 
she?” 

He referred to her elder sister — the one that the Vicar and the . 
Doctor saw nursing a baby the night that old Jewel died. 

“Yes,” replied the girl. “Her man’s going to have her at 
last ; that’s his baby she’s got, you know ; and it seems he’ll 
sooner make her work for keeping it, than pay for it hisself. So 
they’re going to he married ; better late than never.” 

George left her and went in ; into the gloomy old kitchen, now 
darkening rapidly. There sat Madge before the fire, in her 


74 


THE EE COLLECTIONS OF 


favourite attitude, with her chin on her hand and her elbow on her 
knee. 

“ Well, old woman,” said he, “ where’s the old man ? ” 

“ Away to Colyton fair,” she answered. 

“ I hope he’ll have the sense to stay there to-night, then,” said 
George. “ He’ll fall off his horse in a fit coming home drunk 
some of these nights, and be found dead in a ditch ! ” 

“ Good thing for you if he was ! ” 

“ May be,” said George ; “ hut I’d he sorry for him, too ! ” 
“You would,” she said laughing. “Why, you young fool, 
you’d he better off in fifty ways ! ” 

“ Why, you unnatural old vixen,” said he, indignantly, “ do you 
miscall a man for caring for his own father ? Ay, and not such 
a had ’un either ; and that’s a thing I’m best judge of ! ” 

“He’s been a good father to you, George, and I like you the 
better, lad, for speaking up for him. He’s an awful old rascal, 
my boy, but you’ll be a worse if you live ! ” 

“ Now, stop that talk of yours, Madge, and don’t go on like a 
mad woman, or else we shall quarrel ; and that I don’t want, for 
I’ve got something to tell you. I want your help, old girl ! ” 

“ Aye, and you’ll get it, my pretty hoy ; though you never tell 
me aught till you are forced.” 

“ Well, I’m going to tell you something now ; so keep your 
ears open. Madge, where is the girl ? ” 

“ Up-stairs.” 

“ Where’s the man ? ” 

“ Outside, in the stable, doing down your horse. Bend over the 
fire, and whisper in my ear, lad ! ” 

“Madge, old girl,” he whispered, as they bent their heads to- 
gether, — “ I’ve wrote the old man’s name where I oughtn’t to 
have done.” 

“ What ! again ! ” she answered. “ Three times ! For God’s 
sake, mind what you are at, George.” 

“ Why,” said he, astonished, “ did you know I’d done it 
before ? ” 

“ Twice I know of,” she said. “ Once last year, and once last 
month. How do you think he’d have been so long without finding 
it out if it hadn’t been for me ? And what a fool you were not to 
tell me before. Why, you must be mad. I as near let the cat 
out of the bag coming over that last business in the book without 
being ready for it, as anything could be. However, it’s all right 
at present. But what’s this last ? ” 

“ Why, the five hundred. I only did it twice.” 

“ You mustn’t do it again, George. You were a fool ever to do 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


75 

it without me. We are hardly safe now, if he should get talking 
to the hank people. However, he never goes there, and you must 
take care he don’t.” 

“ I say, Madge,” said George, “what would he do if he found 
it out ? ” 

“ I couldn’t answer for him,” said she. “ He likes you best of 
anything next his money ; and sometimes I am afraid he wouldn’t 
spare even you if he knew he had been robbed. You might make 
yourself safe for any storm, if you liked.” 

“How?” 

“ Marry that little doll Thornton, and get her money. Then, if 
it came to a row, you could square it up.” 

“ Well,” said George, “I am pushing that on. The old man 
won’t come round, and I want her to go off with me, but she can’t 
get her courage up yet.” 

“Well, at all events,” said Madge, “you should look sharp. 
There’s a regular tight-laced mob about her, and they all hate you. 
There’s that Mrs. Buckley. Her conversation will he verj^ different 
from yours, and she’ll see the difference, and get too proud for the 
like of you. That woman’s a real lady, and that’s very dangerous, 
for she treats her like an equal. Just let that girl get over her 
first fancy for you, and she’ll care no more about you than nothing. 
Get hold of her before she’s got tired of you.” 

“ And there’s another thing,” said George. “ That Tom Trou- 
hridge is staying there again.” 

“ That’s very bad,” said Madge. “ She is very likely to take a 
fancy to him. He’s a fine young fellow. You get her to go off 
with you. I’ll find the money, somehow. Here comes the old 
man.” 

Old Hawker came in half- drunk and sulky. 

“Why, George,” he said; “you at home. I thought you’d 
have been down, hanging about the parson’s. You don’t get on 
very fast with that girl, lad. I thought you’d have had her by 
now. You’re a fool, hoy.” 

He reeled up to bed, and left the other two in the kitchen. 

“ George,” said Madge, “ tell us what you did with that last 
money.” 

“ i ain’t going to tell you,” he answered. 

“ Ha, Ha ! ” she said ; “ you hadn’t need to hide anything from 
me now.” 

“ Well, I like to tell you this least of all,” he said. “ That last 
money went to hush up the first matter.” 

“Did any one know of the first matter, then?” said Madge 
aghast. 


76 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ Yes ; the man who put me up to it.” 

“ Who was that ? ” 

“ No one you know. William Lee of Belston.” 

“ No one I know,” she answered sarcastically. “ Not know my 
old sweetheart, Bill Lee of Belston. And I the only one that knew 
him when he came back. Well, I’ve kept that to myself, because 
no good was to be got by peaching on him, and a secret’s always 
worth money. Why, lad, I could have sent that man abroad again 
quicker than he come, if I had a-wanted. Why hadn’t you trusted 
me at first ? You’d a-saved five hundred pound. You’ll have him 
back as soon as that’s gone.” . 

“ He’d better mind himself, then,” said George vindictively. 

“ None o’ that now,” said Madge ; “ that’s what you were after 
the other night with your gun. But nothing came of it ; I saw 
that in your face when you came home. Now get off to bed ; and 
if Bill Lee gives you any more trouble, send him to me.” 

He went to bed, but instead of sleeping lay thinking. 

“ It would be a fine thing,” he thought, “ to get her and her 
money. I am very fond of her for her own sake, but then the 
money would be the making of me. I ought to strike while the 
iron is hot. Who knows but what Nell might come gandering 
back in one of her tantrums, and spoil everything. Or some of 
the other girls might get talking. And this cursed cheque, too ; 
that ought to be provided against. What a fool I was not to tell 
Madge about it before. I wonder whether she is game to come, 
though I think she is ; she has been very tender lately. It don’t 
look as if she was getting tired of me, though she might take a 
fancy into her head about Troubridge. I daresay her father is 
putting him up to it ; though, indeed, that would be sure to set 
her against him. If he hadn’t done that with Stockbridge, she’d 
have married him, I believe. Well, I’ll see her to-morrow night, 
and carry on like mad. Terribly awkward it will be, though, if 
she won’t. However, we’ll see. There’s a way to make her ; ” 
and so he fell asleep. 

As Somebody would have it, the very next day the Vicar and 
Mary had a serious quarrel. Whether his digestion was out of 
order ; whether the sight of so many love-couples passing his gate 
the night before had ruffled him and made him bilious ; or whether 
some one was behindhand with his tithe, we shall never know. 
Only we know, that shortly after dinner they disagreed about some 
trifle, and Mary remained sulky all the afternoon ; and that at tea- 
time, driven on by pitiless fate, little thinking what was hanging 
over him, he made some harsh remark, which brought down a flood 
of tears. Whereat, getting into a passion, he told Mary, somewhat 


GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 


77 


unjustly, that she was always sulking, and was making his life 
miserable. That it was time that she was married. That Tom 
Troubridge was an excellent young fellow, and that he considered 
it was her duty to turn her attention immediately to gaining his 
affections. 

Mary said, with tearful indignation, that it was notorious that 
he was making love to Miss Biirrit of Paiskow. And that if he 
wasn’t, she’d never, never, think of him, for that he was a great, 
lumbering, stupid, stupid fool. There now. 

Then the Vicar got into an unholy frame of mind, and maddened 
by Mary’s tears, and the sight of his sister wiping her frightened 
face with her handkerchief, said, with something like an assevera- 
tion, that she was ahvays at it. That she was moping about, and 
colloguing with that infamous young scoundrel. Hawker. That he 
would not have it. That if he found him lurking about his 
premises, he’d either break his neck himself, or find some one who 
could ; and a great deal more frantic nonsense, such as weak men 
generally indulge in when they get in a passion ; much better left 
unsaid at any time, but which on this occasion, as the reader 
knows, was calculated to be ruinous. 

Mary left the room, and went to her own. She was in a furious 
passion against her father, against all the world. She sat on the 
bed for a time, and cried herself quiet. It grew dark, and she lit 
a candle, and put it in the right corner of the window, and soon 
after, wrapping a shawl around her, she slipped down the back- 
stairs, and went into the croft. 

Not long before she heard a low whistle, to which she replied, 
and in a very few minutes felt George’s arm round her waist, and 
his cheek against hers. 

“ I knew you would not disappoint me to-night, my love,” he 
began. “ I have got something particular to say to you. You 
seem out of sorts to-night, my dear. It’s not my fault, is 
it?” 

“ Not yours, George. Oh no,” she said. “ My father has been 
very cruel and unjust to me, and I have been in a great passion, 
and very miserable. I am so glad you came to-night, that I might 
tell you how very unhappy I was.” 

“ Tell me everything, my love. Don’t keep back any secrets 
from me.” 

“ I won’t indeed, George. I’ll tell you everything. Though 
some of it will make you very angry. My father broke out about 
you at tea-time, and said that you were hanging about the place, 
and that he wouldn’t have it. And then he said that I ought to 
marry Tom Troubridge, and that I said I’d never do. And then 


78 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


he went on worse again. He’s quite changed lately, George. I 
ain’t at all happy with him.” 

“ The cure is in your owi hands, Mary. Come off with me. I 
can get a licence, and we could be married in a week or so, or two. 
Then, what follows ? Why, your father is very angry. He is that 
at present. But he’ll of course make believe he is in a terrible 
way. Well, in a few weeks he’d see it was no use carrying on. 
That his daughter had married a young man of property, who was 
very fond of her, and as she was very fond of. And that matters 
might be a deal worse. That a bird in hand is worth two in the 
bush. And so he’ll write a kind affectionate letter to his only 
child, and say that he forgives her husband for her sake. That’s 
how the matter will end, depend upon it.” 

“Oh, George, George ! if I could only think so.” 

“ Can you doubt it ? Use your reason, my dear, and ask your- 
self what he would gain by holding out. You say he’s so fond of 
you.” 

“ Oh, I know he is.” 

“ Well, my darling, he wouldn’t show it much if he was angry 
very long. You don’t know what a change it will make when the 
thing’s once done. When I am his son-in-law he’ll be as anxious 
to find out that I’m a saint as he is now to make me out a sinner. 
Say yes, my girl.” 

“ I am afraid, George.” 

“ Of nothing. Come, you are going to say yes, now.” 

“ But when, George ? Not yet ? ” 

“ To-moiTow night.” 

“ Impossible ! Sunday evening ? ” 

“ The better the day the better the deed. Come, no refusal 
now, it is too late, my darling. At ten o’clock I shall be here, 
under your window. One kiss more, my own, and good night.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

IN WHICH THE VICAR PREACHES A FAREWELL SERMON. 

Who has not seen the misery and despair often caused in a family 
by the senseless selfishness of one of its members ? Who has 
not felt enraged at such times, to think that a man or woman 
should presume on the affection and kindheartedness of their rela- 
tives, and yet act as if they were wholly without those afiections 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


79 


themselves ? And, lastly, who of us all is guiltless of doing this ? 
Let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone. 

The Spring sun rose on the Sabbath morning, as if no trouble 
were in store for any mortal that day. The Vicar rose with the 
sun, for he had certain arrears of the day’s sermons to get 
through, and he was in the habit of saying that his best and 
clearest passages were written with his window open, in the brisk 
morning air. 

But although the air was brisk and pleasant this morning, and 
all nature was in full glory, the inspiration did not come to the 
Vicar quite so readily as usual. In fact, he could not write at 
all, and at one time was thinking of pleading ill health, and not 
preaching, but afterwards changed his mind, and patched the 
sermons up somehow, making both morning and afternoon five 
minutes shorter than usual. 

He felt queer and dull in the head this morning. And, after 
breakfast, he walked to church with his sister and daughter, not 
speaking a word. Miss Thornton was rather alarmed, he looked 
so dull and stupid. But Mary set it all down to his displeasure 
at her. 

She was so busy with far other thoughts at church that she did 
not notice the strange halting way in which her father read the 
service — sometimes lisping, sometimes trying twice before he 
could pronounce a word at all. But, after church. Miss Thornton 
noticed it to her ; and she also noticed, as they stood waiting for 
him under the lychgate, that he passed through the crowd of 
neighbours, who stood as usual round the porch to receive him, 
without a word, merely raising his hat in salutation. Conduct 
so strange that Miss Thornton began to cry, and said she was 
sure her brother was very ill. But Mary said it w^as because he 
was still angry with her that he spoke to no one, and that when 
he had forgotten his cause of offence he would be the same again. 

At lunch, the Vicar drank several glasses of wine, which seemed 
to do him good ; and by the time he had, to Miss Thornton’s 
great astonishment, drunk half a bottle, he was quite himself 
again. Mary was all this time in her room, and the Vicar asked 
for her. But Miss Thornton said she was not very well. 

Oh, I remember,” said the Vicar, “ I quarrelled with her last 
night. I was quite in the wrong, but, my dear sister, all yester- 
day and to-day I have been so nervous, I have not known what 
I said or did. I shall keep myself up to the afternoon service 
with wine, and to-morrow we will see the Doctor. Don’t tell 
Mary I’m ill. She will think she is the cause, poor girl.” 

Afternoon service went off well enough. When Mary heard his 


80 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


old familiar voice strong, clear, and harmonious, filling the aisles 
and chapels of the beautiful old church, she was quite reassured. 
He seemed stronger than usual even, and never did the congrega- 
tion listen to a nobler or better sermon from his lips, than the 
one they heard that spring afternoon ; the last, alas, they ever 
had from their kind old Vicar. 

Mary could not listen to it. The old innocent interest she used 
to have in her father’s success in preaching was gone. As of old, 
sitting beneath the carved oak screen, she heard the sweet simple 
harmony of the evening hymn roll up, and die in pleasant echoes 
among the lofty arches overhead. As of old, she could see 
through the rich traceried windows the moor sloping far away, 
calm and peaceful, bathed in a misty halo of afternoon sunshine. 
All these familiar sights and sounds were the same, but she herself 
was different. She was about to break rudely through from the 
old world of simple routine and homely pleasure, and to cast 
herself unthinking into a new world of passion and chance, and 
take the consequences of such a step, let them be what they 
might. She felt as if she was the possessor of some guilty secret, 
and felt sometimes as if some one would rise in church and 
denounce her. How would all these quiet folks talk of her to- 
morrow morning ? That was not to be thought of. She must 
harden her heart and think of nothing. Only that to-morrow she 
would be far away with her lover. 

Poor Mary ! many a woman, and many a man, who sat so quiet 
and calm in the old church that afternoon, had far guiltier secrets 
than any you ever had, to trouble them, and yet they all drank, 
slept, and died, as quietly as many honest and good men. Poor 
girl ! let us judge as kindly of her as we can, for she paid a fearful 
penalty for her self-will. She did but break through the preju- 
dices of her education, we may say ; and if she was undutiful, what 
girls are not, under the influence of passion? If such poor 
excuses as these will cause us to think more kindly of her, let us 
make them, and leave the rest' to God. Perhaps, brother, you 
and I may stand in a position to have excuses made for us, one 
day ; therefore, we will be charitable. 

My lord was at church that afternoon, a very rare circumstance, 
for he was mostly at his great property in the north, and had 
lately been much abroad for his health. So when Miss Thornton 
and Mary joined the Vicar in the main aisle, and the three went 
forth into the churchyard, they found the villagers drawn respect- 
fully back upon the graves, and his lordship waiting in close 
confabulation with farmer Wreford, to receive the Vicar as he 
came out. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


81 


A tall, courtly, grizzled -looking man he was, with clear grey 
eyes, and a modulated harmonious voice. Well did their lord- 
ships of the upper-house know that voice, when after a long 
sleepy debate it aroused them from ambrosial slumbers, with 
biting sarcasm, and most disagreeably told truths. And most 
heartily did a certain proportion of their lordships curse the owner 
of that voice, for a talented, eloquent, meddlesome innovator. 
But on all his great estates he was adored by the labourers and 
town’s-folk, though hated by the farmers and country ’squires ; 
for he was the earliest and fiercest of the reform and free-trade 
warriors. 

He came up to the Vicar with a pleasant smile. “ I have to 
thank you, Mr. Thornton, for a most charming sermon, though 
having the fault common to all good things, of being too short. 

Miss Thornton, I hope you are quite well ; I saw Lady D the 

other day, and she begged that when I came down here, I would 
convey her kindest love to you. I think she mentioned that she 
was about to write to you.” 

“ I received a letter from her ladyship last week,” said Miss 
Thornton ; “ informing me that dear Lady Fanny had got a son 
and heir.” 

“Happy boy,” said my Lord; “fifty thousand a year, and 
nothing to do for it, unless he likes. Besides a minority of at 

least ten years ; for L is getting very shaky. Miss Thornton, 

and is still devotedly given to stewed mushrooms. Nay, my dear 
lady, don’t look distressed, she will make a noble young dowager. 
This must he your daughter, Mr. Thornton — pray introduce me.” 

Mary was introduced, and his Lordship addressed a few kindly 
commonplaces to her, to which she replied with graceful modesty. 
Then he demanded of the Vicar, “ where is Dr. Mulhaus, has he 
been at church this afternoon ? ” 

At that moment the Doctor, attended by the old clerk, was head 
and shoulders into the old oak chest that contained the parish 
registers, looking for the book of burials for sixteen hundred and 
something. Not being able to get to the bottom, he got bodily 
in, as into a bath, and after several dives succeeding in fishing it 
up from the bottom, and standing there absorbed for a few minutes, 
up to his middle in dusty parchments and angry moths, he got 
his finger on a particular date, and dashed out of church, book in 
hand, and hatless, crying, “ Vicar, Vicar ! ” just as the villagers 
had cleared off, and my lord was moving away with the Vicar to 
the parsonage, to take dinner. 

When his Lordship saw the wild dusty figure come running out 
of the church porch with the parish register in his hand, and no 

7 


82 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 


hat on his head, he understood the position immediately. He sat 
down on a tombstone, and laughed till he could laugh no longer. 

“ No need to tell me,” he said through his laughter, “ that he 
is unchanged ; just as mad and energetic as ever, at whatever he 
takes in hand, whether getting together impossible ministries, or 
searching the parish-register of an English village. How do you 
do, my dear old friend ? ” 

“ And how do you do, old democrat? ” answered the Doctor. 
“ Politics seem to agree with you ; I believe you would die with- 
out vexation — just excuse me a moment. Look you here, you 
infidel,” to the Vicar, showing him the register; “there’s his 
name plain — ‘ Burrows, Curate of this parish, 1698.’ — Now what 
do you say ? ” 

The Vicar acquiesced with a sleepy laugh, and proposed moving 
homewards. Miss Thornton hoped that the Doctor would join 
them at dinner as usual. The Doctor said of course, and went 
hack to fetch his hat, my Lord following him into the church. 
When the others had gone down the hill, and were waiting for the 
nobleman and the Doctor at the gate. Miss Thornton watched the 
two coming down the hill. My Lord stopped the Doctor, and 
eagerly demonstrated something to him with his forefinger on the 
palm of his hand ; but the Doctor only shook his head, and then 
the pair moved on. 

My Lord made himself thoroughly agreeable at dinner, as did 
also the Doctor. Mary was surprised too at the calm highbred 
bearing of her aunt, the way she understood and spoke of every 
subject of conversation, and the deference with which they lis- 
tened to her. It was a side of her aunt’s character she had never 
seen before, and she felt it hard to believe that that intellectual 
dignified lady, referred to on all subjects, was the old maid she 
had been used to laugh at, and began to feel that she was in an 
atmosphere far above what she was accustomed to. 

“ All this is above me,” she said to herself ; “let them live in 
this sphere who are accustomed to it, I have chosen wiser, out of 
the rank in which I have been brought up. I would sooner be 
George Hawker’s wife than sit there, crushed and bored by their 
high-flown talk.” , \ 

Soon after dinner she retired with her aunt ; they did not talk 
much when they were alone, so Mary soon retired Ho her room, 
and having made a few very slight preparations, sat down at the 
window. The time was soon to come, but it was very cold ; the 
maids were out, as they always were on Sunday evening, and 
there was a fire in the kitchen, — she would go and sit there — so 
down she went. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


83 



She wished to be alone, so when she saw a candle burning in 
the kitchen she was disappointed, but went in nevertheless. My 
Lord s groom, who had been sitting before the fire, rose up and 
^ saluted her. A handsome young man, rather square and promi- 
nent about the jaws, but nevertheless foolish and amiable looking. 
The sort of man one would suppose, who, if his lord were to tell 
him to jump into the pit Tophet, would pursue one of two courses, 
either jump in himself, without further to do, or throw his o^vn 
brother in with profuse apologies. From the top of his sleek 
round head to the sole of his perfect top-boot, the model and 
living exponent of what a servant should be — fit to be put into a 
case and ticketed as such. 

! He saluted her as she came in, and drawing a letter from his 
hat, put it into her astonished hands. “ My orders were. Miss, 
that I was not to give it to you unless I saw you personally.” 

i She thanked him and withdrew to read it. It was a scrawl 
from George Hawker, the first letter she had ever received from 
him, and ran as follows : — 

“ My Heart’s Darling, 

I “I SHALL be in the croft to-night, according to promise, 

i ready to make you the happiest woman in England, so I know you 

i won’t fail. My Lord is coming to church this afternoon, and will 

I be sure to dine with you. So I send this present by his groom, 

I Sam ; a good young chap, which I have known since he was so 

' high, and like well, only that he is soft, which is not to his dis- 

}/ advantage. 

] “G. H.” 

: , She was standing under the lamp reading this when she heard 
j the dining-room door open, and the men coming out from their 

v wine. She slipped into the room opposite, and stood listening in 

• the dark. She could see them as they came out. There was my 

Lord and the Doctor first, and behind came Major Buckley, who 
had dropped in, as his custom was, on Sunday evening, and who 
must have arrived while she was upstairs. As they passed the 
door, inside which she stood, his Lordship turned round and 
; said : — 

I ‘‘I tell you what, my dear Major, if that old Hawker was a 

tenant of mine, I’d take away his lease, and, if I could, force him 
to leave the parish. One man of that kind does incalculable 
harm in a village, by lowering the tone of the morality of the 
place. That’s the use of a great landlord if he does his duty. 

. He can punish evildoers whom the law does not reach.” 

1 


84 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ Don’t say anything more about him,” said the Doctor in a 
low voice. “ It’s a tender subject in this house.” 

“It is, eh!” said my Lord; “thanks for the hint, good- — 
bah ! — Mulhaus. Let us go up and have half an hour with Miss 
Thornton before I go I ” 

They went up, and then her father followed. He seemed 
flushed, and she thought he must have been drinking too much 
wine. After they were in the drawing-room, she crept upstairs 
and listened. They were all talking except her father. It was 
half-past nine, and she wished they would go. So she went into 
her bedroom and waited. The maids had come home, and she 
heard them talking to the groom in the kitchen. At ten o’clock 
the bell was rung, and my Lord’s horse ordered. Soon he went, 
and not long afterwards the Major and the Doctor followed. Then 
she saw Miss Thornton go to her room, and her father walk slowly 
to his ; and all was still throughout the house. 

She took her hat and shawl and slipped down stairs shoeless 
into her father’s study. She laid a note on his chimney-piece, 
which she had written in the morning, and opening the back-door 
fled swiftly forth, not daring to look behind her. Quickly, under 
the blinking stars, under the blooming apple-trees, out to the 
croft-gate, and there was George waiting impatiently for her, 
according to promise. 

“I began to fear you were not coming, my dear. Quick, 
jump I ” 

She scrambled over the gate, and jumped into his arms ; he 
hurried her down the lane about a hundred yards, and then became 
aware of a dark object in the middle of the road. 

“ That’s my gig, my dear. Once in that, and we are soon in 
Exeter. All right. Bob ? ” 

“ All right ! ” replied a strange voice in the dark, and she was 
lifted into the gig quickly ; in another moment George was beside 
her, and they were flying through the dark steep lanes at a dan- 
gerous speed. 

The horse was a noble beast — the finest in the country side — 
and, like his driver, knew every stock and stone on the road ; so 
that ere poor Mary had recovered her first flurry, they had crossed 
the red ford, and were four miles on the road towards the capital, 
and began to feel a little more cheerful, for she had been crying 
bitterly. 

“Don’t give way, Polly,” said George. 

“ No fear of my giving way now, George. If I had been going 
to do that, I’d have done it before. Now tell us wh^t you are 
going to do ? I have left everything to you.” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


85 


“ I think we had better go straight on to London, my dear,” he 
replied, “ and get married by licence. We could never stop in 
Exeter ; and if you feel up to it, I should like to get off by early 
coach to-morrow morning. What do you say ? ” 

“ By all means ! Shall we be there in time ? ” 

“ Yes ; two hours before the coach starts.” 

“ Have you money enough, George ? ” she asked. 

“ Plenty ! ” he replied. 

“ If you go short, you must come to me, you know,” she said. 

They rattled through the broad streets of a small country town 
just as the moon rose. The noble minster, which had for many 
years been used as the parish church, slept quietly among the 
yews and gravestones ; all the town was still ; only they two were 
awake, flying, she thought, from the fellowship of all quiet men. 
Was her father asleep now ? she wondered. What would Miss 
Thornton say in the morning ? and many other things she was 
asking herself, when she was interrupted by George saying, “ Only 
eight miles to Exeter; we shall be in by daybreak.” 

So they left Crediton Minster behind them, and rolled away 
along the broad road by the river, beneath the whispering 
poplars. 

;K- H-. >:c :!< 'M 

As Miss Thornton was dressing herself next morning she 
heard the Vicar go down into his study as usual. She con- 
gratulated herself that he was better, from being up thus early, 
but determined, nevertheless, that he should see a doctor that 
day, who might meet and consult with Dr. Mulhaus. 

Then she wondered why Mary had not been in. She generally 
came into her aunt’s room to hook-and-eye her, as she called it ; 
but not having come this morning. Miss Thornton determined to 
go to her, and accordingly went and rapped at her door. 

No answer. “Could the girl have been fool enough?” 
thought Miss Thornton. “ Nonsense ! no ! She must be 
asleep ! ” 

She opened the door and went in. Everything tidy; The 
bed had not been slept in. Miss Thornton had been in at an 
elopement, and a famous one, before ; so she knew the symptoms 
in a moment. Well she remembered the dreadful morning when 
Lady Kate went off with Captain Brentwood, of the Artillery. 
Well she remembered the Countess going into hysterics. But 
this was worse than that ; this touched her nearer home. 

“ Oh you naughty girl ! Oh you wicked, ungrateful girl ; to 
go and do such a thing at a time like this, when I’ve been 
watching the paralysis creeping over him day by day ! How shall 


86 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


I tell him ? How shall I ever tell him ? He will have a stroke 
as sure as fate. He was going to have one without this. I 
dare not tell him till breakfast, and yet I ought to tell him at 
once. I was brought into the world to he driven mad by girls. 
Oh, dear, I wish they were all boys, and we might send them to 
Eton and wash our hands of them. Well, I must leave crying, 
and prepare for telling him.” 

She went into his study, and at first could not see him ; but he 
was there — a heap of black clothes lay on the hearthrug, and 
Miss Thornton running up, saw that it was her brother, speech- 
less, senseless, clasping a letter in his hand. 

She saw that the worst was come, and nerved herself for 
work, like a valiant soul as she was. She got him carried to his 
bed by the two sturdy maids, and sent an express for Dr. 
Mulhaus, and another for the professional surgeon. Then she 
took from her pocket the letter which she had found in the poor 
Vicar’s hand, and going to the window, read as follows ; 

“ When you get this, father, I shall be many miles away. I 
have started to London with George Hawker, and God only 
knows whether you will see me again. Try to forgive me, father, 
and if not, forget that you ever had a daughter who was only 
born to give you trouble. — Your erring but affectionate Mary.” 

It will be seen by the reader that this unlucky letter, written in 
agitation and hurry, contained no allusion whatever to marriage, 
but rather left one to infer that she was gone with Hawker as 
his mistress. So the Vicar read it again and again, each time 
more mistily, till sense and feeling departed, and he lay before his 
hearth a hopeless paralytic. 

At that moment Mary, beside George, was rolling through the 
fresh morning air, up the beautiful Exe valley. Her fears were 
gone with daylight and sunshine, and as he put his arm about her 
v;aist, she said, 

“ I am glad we came outside.” 

“ Are you quite happy now ? ” he asked. 

Quite happy ! ” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


87 


CHAPTER XII. 

IN WHICH A NEW FACE IS INTRODUCED, BY MEANS OF A RAT 
AND A TERRIER. 

For the first four weeks that the Vicar lay paralysed, the neigh- 
bouring clergymen had done his duty ; but now arose a new 
difficulty at Drumston. Who was to do the duty while the poor 
Vicar lay there on his hack speechless ? 

“ How,” asked Miss Thornton of Tom Trouhridge, “ are we to 
make head against the dissenters now ? Let the duty lapse but 
one single week, my dear friend, and you will see the chapels 
overflowing once more. My brother has always had a hard fight to 
keep them to church, for they have a natural tendency to dissent 
here. And a great number don’t care what the denominations 
are, so long as there is noise enough.” 

“ If that is the case,” answered Tom, “ old Mark Hook’s place 
of worship should pay best. I’d back them against Bedlam any 
day.” 

“ They certainly make the loudest noise at a Revival,” said 
Miss Thornton. “ But what are we to do ? ” 

“ That I am sure I don’t know, my dearest auntie,” said Trou- 
bridge, “ but I am here, and my horse too, ready to go any 
amount of eiTands.” 

“I see no way,” said Miss Thornton, “but to write to the 
Bishop.” 

“ And I see no way else,” said Tom, “ unless you like to dress 
me up as a parson, and see if I would do.” 

Miss Thornton wrote to the Bishop, with whom she had some 
acquaintance, and told him how her brother had been struck 
down with paralysis, and that the parish was unprovided for : that 
if he would send any gentleman he approved of, she would gladly 
receive him at Drumston. 

Anned with this letter, Tom found himself, for the first time in 
his life, in an episcopal palace. A sleek servant in black opened 
the door with cat-like tread, and admitted him into a dark, warm 
hall ; and on Tom’s saying, in a hoarse whisper, as if he was in 
church, that he had brought a note of importance, and would wait 
for an answer, the man glided away, and disappeared through a 
spring-door, which swung to behind him. Tom thought it would 
have banged, but it didn’t. Bishops’ doors never bang. 

Tom had a great awe for your peers spiritual. He could get 
on well enough with a peer temporal, particularly if that proud 


88 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


aristocrat happened to be in want of a horse ; but a bishop was 
quite another matter. 

So he sat rather uncomfortable in the dark, warm hall, listening 
to such dull sounds as could be heard in the gloomy mansion. A 
broad oak staircase led up from the hall into lighter regions, and 
there stood, on a landing above, a lean, wheezy old clock, all over 
brass knobs, which, as he looked on it, choked, and sneezed 
four. 

But now there was a new sound in the house. An indecent 
secular sound. A door near the top of the house was burst 
violently open, and there was a scuffle. A loud voice shouted 
twice unmistakably and distinctly, “ So-o, good bitch ! ” And 
then the astounded Tom heard the worrying of a terrier, and the 
squeak of a dying rat. There was no mistake about it ; he heard 
the bones crack. Then he made out that a dog was induced to 
go into a room on false pretences, and deftly shut up there, and 
then he heard a heavy step descending the stairs towards him. 

But, before there was time for the perpetrator of these sacrileges 
to come in sight, a side door opened, and the Bishop himself came 
forth with a letter in his hand (a mild, clever, gentlemanly-looking 
man he was too, Tom remarked) and said, — 

“ Pray is there not a messenger from Drumston here ? ” 

Tom replied that he had brought a letter from his cousin the 
Vicar. He had rather expected to hear it demanded, “ Where 
is the audacious man who has dared to penetrate these sacred 
shades ? ” and was agreeably relieved to find that the Bishop 
wasn’t angry with him. 

“ Dear me,” said the Bishop ; “I beg a thousand pardons for 
keeping you in the hall ; pray walk into my study.” 

So in he went and sat down. The Bishop resumed, — 

“ You are Mr. Thornton’s cousin, sir ? ” 

Tom bowed. “ I am about the nearest relation he has besides 
his sister, my lord.” 

“ Indeed,” said the Bishop. “ I have written to Miss Thornton 
to say that there is a gentleman, a relation of my own, now living 
in the house with me, who will undertake Mr. Thornton’s duties, 
and I dare say, also, without remuneration. He has nothing to 
do at present. — Oh, here is the gentleman I spoke of ! ” 

Here was the gentleman he spoke of, holding a dead rat by 
the tail, and crying out, — 

“ Look here, uncle ; what did I tell you ? I might have 
been devoured alive, had it not been for my faithful Fly, your 
enemy.” 

He was about six feet or nearly so in height, with a highly 


GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 


89 


intellectual though not a handsome face. His brown hair, care- 
lessly brushed, fell over a forehead both broad and lofty, beneath 
which < shone a pair of bold, clear grey eyes. The moment 
Troubridge saw him he set him down in his ovti mind as a 
“ goer,” by which he meant a man who had go, or energy, in 
him. A man, he thought, who was thrown away as a parson. 

The Bishop, ringing the bell, began again, “ This is my 
nephew, Mr. Frank Maberly.” 

The sleek servant entered. 

“ My dear Frank, pray give that rat to Sanders, and let him 
take it away. I don’t like such things in the study.” 

“ I only brought it to convince you, uncle,” said the other. 
“ Here you are, Sanders ! ” 

But Sanders would have as soon shaken hands with the Pope. 
He rather thought the rat was alive ; and taking the tongs, he 
received the beast at a safe distance, while Tom saw a smile of 
contempt pass over the young curate’s features. 

“You’d make a good missionary, Sanders,” said he; and 
turning to Troubridge, continued, “ Pray excuse this interlude, 
sir. You don’t look as if you would refuse to shake me by my 
ratty hand.” 

Tom thought he would sooner shake hands with him than fight 
him, and was so won by Maberly’s manner, that he was just going 
to say so, when he recollected the presence he was in, and blushed 
scarlet. 

“My dear Frank,” resumed his uncle, “Mr. Thornton of 
Drumston is taken suddenly ill, and I want you to go over and 
do his duties for him till he is better.” 

“ Most certainly, my dear lord ; and when shall I go ? ” 

“ Say to-morrow ; will that suit your household, sir ? ” said 
the Bishop. 

Tom replied, “ Yes, certainly,” and took his leave. Then the 
Bishop, turning to Frank, said, — 

“ The living of Drumston, nephew, is in my gift ; and if Mr. 
Thornton does not recover, as is very possible, I shall give it to 
you. I wish you, therefore, to go to Drumston, and become 
acquainted with your future parishioners. You will find Miss 
Thornton a most charming old lady.” 

Frank Maberly was the second son of a country gentleman of 
good property, and was a very remarkable character. His uncle 
had always said of him, that whatever he chose to take up he would 
be first in ; and his uncle was right. At Eton he was not only the 
best cricketer and runner, but decidedly the best scholar of his 
time. At Cambridge, for the first year, he was probably the 


90 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


noisiest man in his college, though he never lived what is called 
hard ; ” but in the second year he took up his books once more, 
and came forth third wrangler and first class, and the second day 
after the class-list came out, made a very long score in the match 
with Oxford. Few men were more popular, though the fast men 
used to call him crotchety ; and on some subjects, indeed, he was 
very impatient of contradiction. And most of his friends were a 
little disappointed when they heard of his intention of going into 
the Church. His father went so far as to say, — 

“ My dear Frank, I always thought you would have been a 
lawyer.” 

“ I’d sooner he a well, never mind what.” 

“ But you might have gone into the army, Frank,” said his 
father. 

“ I am going into the army, sir,” he said ; “ into the army of 
Christ.” 

Old Mr. Maherly was at first shocked by this last expression 
from a son who rarely or never talked on religious matters, and 
told his wife so that night. 

“But,” he added, “since I’ve been thinking of it, I’m sure 
Frank meant neither blague nor irreverence. He is in earnest. I 
never knew him teU a lie ; and since he was six years old he has 
known how to call a spade a spade.” 

“ He’ll make a good parson,” said the mother. 

“ He’ll be first in that, as he is in everything else,” said the 
father. 

“ But he’ll never be a bishop,” said Mrs. Maherly. 

“ Why not ? ” said the husband, indignantly. 

“ Because, as you say yourself, husband, he will call a spade a 
spade.” 

“ Bah ! you are a radical,” said the father. “ Go to sleep.” 

At the time of John Thornton’s illness, he had been ordained 
about a year and a half. He got the title for orders, as a curate, 
in a remote part of Devon, but had left it in consequence of a 
violent disagreement with his rector, in which he had been most 
fully borne out by his uncle, who, by the bye, was not the sort of 
man who would have supported his own brother, had he been in 
the wrong. Since then Frank Maherly had been staying with his 
uncle, and, as he expressed it, “ working the slums ” at Exeter. 

Miss Thornton sat in the drawing-room at Drumston the day 
after Tom’s visit to the Bishop, waiting dinner for the new Curate. 
Tom and she had been wondering how he would come. Miss 
Thornton said, probably in the Bishop’s carriage ; but Tom was 
inclined to think he would ride over. The dinner time was past 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


91 


some ten minutes, when they saw a man in black put his hand on 
the garden-gate, vault over, and run breathless up to the hall-door. 
Tom had recognised him and dashed out to receive him, hut ere he 
had time to say “ good -day ” even, the new-comer pulled out his 
watch, and having looked at it, said in a tone of vexation : — 

“Twenty-one minutes, as near as possible; nay, a little over. 
By J ove ! how pursy a fellow gets mewed up in town ! How far 
do you call it, now, from the Buller Arms ? ” 

“ It is close upon four miles,” said Tom, highly amused. 

“ So they told me,” replied Frank Maherly. “ I left my port- 
manteau there, and the landlord fellow had the audacity to say in 
conversation that I couldn’t run the four miles in twenty minutes. 
It’s lucky a parson can’t bet, or I should have lost my money. 
But the last mile is very much up-hill, as you must allow.” 

“I’ll tell you what, sir,” said Tom; “there’s isn’t a man in 
this parish would go that four mile under twenty minutes. If any 
man could, I ought to know of it.” 

Miss Thornton had listened to this conversation with wonder not 
unmixed with amusement. At first she had concluded that the 
Bishop’s carriage was upset, and that Frank was the breathless 
messenger sent forward to chronicle the mishap. But her tact soon 
showed the sort of person she had to deal with, for she was not 
unacquainted with the perfonnances of public schoolboys. She 
laughed when she called to mind the bouleversement that used to 
take place when Lord Charles and Lord Frederick came home from 
Harrow, and invaded her quiet school-room. So she advanced into 
the passage to meet the new-comer with one of her pleasantest 
smiles. 

“ I must claim an old woman’s privilege of introducing myself, 

Mr. Maherly,” she said. “ Your | uncle was tutor to the B s, 

when I was governess to the D s ; so we are old acquaintances.” 

“ Can you forgive me. Miss Thornton,” he said, “ for running 
up to the house in this lunatic sort of way ? I am still half a 
schoolboy, you know. What an old jewel she is ! ” he added to 
himself. 

Tom said : “ May I show you your room, Mr. Maherly ? ” 

“If you please, do,” said Frank; and added, “ Get out. Fly; 
what are you doing here ? ” 

But Miss Thornton interceded for the dog, a beautiful little 
black and tan terrier, whose.points Tom was examining with pro- 
found admiration. 

“ That’s a brave little thing, Mr. Maherly,” said he, as he 
showed him to his room. “ I should like to put in my name for 
a pup.” 


92 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


They stood face to face in the hed-room as he said this, and 
Frank, not answering him, said abruptly : — 

“ By Jove ! what a splendid man you are ! What do you weigh, 

” -in 

“ Close upon eighteen stone, just now, I should think ; said 
Tom. 

“ Ah, but you are carrying a little flesh,” said Frank. 

“Why, yes; ” said Tom. “ I’ve been to London for a fort- 
night.” 

“ That accounts for it,” said Frank. “ Many dissenters in this 
parish ? ” 

“ A sight of all sorts,” said Tom. “ They want attracting to 
church here ; they don’t go naturally, as they do in some parts.” 

“I see,” said Frank; “I suppose they’ll come next Sunday, 
though, to see the new parson ; my best pian will be to give them 
a stinger, so that they’ll come again.” 

“ Why, you see,” said Tom, “ it’s got about that there’ll be no 
service next Sunday, so they’ll make an excuse for going to Meet- 
ing. Our best plan will be, for you and I to go about and let them 
know that there’s a new minister. Then you’ll get them together, 
and after that I leave it to you to keep them. Shall we go down 
to dinner ? ” 

They came together going out of the door, and Frank turned 
and said : — 

“Will you shake hands with me? I think we shall suit one 
another.” 

“Aye! that we shall,” said Tom, heartily; “you’re a man’s 
parson; that’s about what you are. But,” he added, seriously; 
“ you wouldn’t do among the old women, you know.” 

At dinner. Miss Thornton said, “I hope, Mr. Maberly, you are 
none the worse after your run ? Are you not afraid of such violent 
exercise bringing on palpitation of the heart ? ” 

“ Not I, my dear madam,” he said. “ Let me make my defence 
for what, otherwise, you might consider mere boyish folly. I am 
passionately fond of athletic sports of all kinds, and indulge in tliem 
as a pleasure. No real man is without some sort of pleasure, more 
or less harmless. Nay, even your fanatic is a man who makes a 
pleasure and an excitement of religion. My pleasures are very 
harailess ; and what can be more harmless than keeping this shell 
of ours in the highest state of capacity for noble deeds ? I know,” 
he said, turning to Tom, “ what the great temptation is that such 
men as you or I have to contend against. It is ‘ the pride of life ; ’ 
but if we know that and fight against it, how can it prevail against 
us ? It is easier conquered than the lust of the fleshy or the lust 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


93 


of the eye, though some will tell you that I can’t construe my 
Greek Testament, and that the ‘ pride of life ’ means something 
very different. I hold my opinion, however, in spite of them. 
Then, again, although I have taken a good degree (not so good as 
I might, though), I consider that I have only just begun to study. 
Consequently, I read hard still, and shall continue to do so the 
next twenty years, please God. I find my head the clearer, and 
my intellect more powerful in consequence of the good digestion 
produced by exercise ; so I mean to use it till I get too fat, which 
will be a long while first.” 

“ Ain’t you afraid,” said Tom, laughing, “ of offending some of 
your weaker brothers’ consciences, by running four miles, because 
a publican said you couldn’t ? ” 

“Disputing with a publican might be an error of judgment,” 
said Frank. Bah ! 7night be — itw^s; but with regard to running 
four miles — no. It is natural and right that a man at five-and- 
twenty should be both able and willing to run four miles, a parson 
above all others, as a protest against effeminacy. With regard to 
consciences, those veiy tender-conscienced men oughtn’t to want a 
parson at all.” 

Miss Thornton had barely left the room, to go up to the Yicar, 
leaving Tom and Frank Maberly over their wine, when the hall- 
door was thro^vn open, and the well-known voice of the Doctor was 
heard exclaiming in angry tones : — 

“If! sir, if! always at if’s. ‘If Blucher had destroyed the 
bridge,’ say you, as if he ever meant to be such a Vandal. And 
if he had meant to do it, do you think that fifty Wellesleys in one 
would have stayed him? No, sir ; and if he had destroyed every 
bridge on the Seine, sir, he would have done better than to be 
overruled by the counsels of Wellington (glory go with him, how- 
ever ! He was a good man). And why, forsooth? — because the 
English bore the brunt at Waterloo, in consequence of the Prussians 
being delayed by muddy roads.” 

“ And Ligny,” said the laughing voice of Major Buckley. “Oh, 
Doctor, dear ! I like to make you angry, because then your logic 
is so very outrageous. You are like the man who pleaded not 
guilty of murder : first, because he hadn’t done it ; secondly, that 
he was drunk when he did it ; and thirdly, that it was a case of 
mistaken identity.” 

“ Ha, ha! ” laughed the Doctor, merrily, recovering his good 
humour in a moment. “ That’s an Irish story for a thousand 
pounds. There’s nothing English about that. Ha ! ha ! ” 

They were presented to Frank as the new Curate. The Doctor, 
afocr a* courteous salutation, put on his spectacles, and examined 


94 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


him carefully. Frank looked at him all the time with a quiet 
smile, and in the end the Doctor said — 

“ Allow me the privilege of shaking hands with you, sir. Shall 
I he considered rude if I say that I seldom or never saw a finer 
head than yours on a man’s shoulders ? And judging by the face, 
it is well lined.” 

“ Like a buck-basket,” said Frank, “ full of dirty linen. Plenty 
of it, and of some quality, hut not in a state fit for use yet. I will 
have it washed up, and wear such of it as is worth soon.” 

The Doctor saw he had found a man after his own heart, and it 
was not long before Frank and he were in the seventh heaven of 
discussion. Meanwhile, the Major had drawn up alongside of Tom, 
and said — 

“ Any news of the poor little dove that has left the nest, old 
friend ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Tom, eagerly ; “we have got a letter. Good news, 
too.” 

“ Thank God for that,” said the Major. “ And where are they ? ” 

“ They are now at Brighton.” 

“What’s that?” said the Doctor, turning round. “Any 
news?” 

They told him, and then it became necessaiy to tell Frank 
Maberly what he had not known before, that the Vicar had a 
daughter who had “gone off.” 

“ One of the prettiest, sweetest creatures, Mr. Maberly,” said 
the Major, “ that you ever saw in your life. None of us, I believe, 
knew how well we loved her till she was gone.” 

“And a very remarkable character, besides,” said the Doctor. 

“ Such a force of will as you see in few women of her age. 
Obscured by passion and girlish folly, it seemed more like obstinacy 
to us. But she has a noble heart, and, when she has outlived her 
youthful fancies, I should not be surprised if she turned out a very 
remarkable woman.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE DISCOVERY. 

One morning the man who went once a-week from old Hawker’s, 
at the Woodlands, down to the post, brought back a letter, which 
he delivered to Madge at the door. She turned it over and 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


95 


examined it more carefully than she generally did the old man’s 
letters, for it was directed in a clerk-like hand, and was sealed with 
a big and important-looking seal, and when she came to examine 
this seal, she saw that it bore the words “ B. and F. Bank.” “ So, 
they are at it again, are they? ” she said. “ The deuce take ’em, 
I say : though for that matter I can’t exactly blame the folks for 
looking after their own. Well, there’s no mistake about one thing, 
he must see this letter, else some of ’em will be coming over and 
blowing the whole thing. He will ask me to read it for him, and 
I’ll do so, right to an end. Lord, what a breeze there’ll be ! I 
hope I shall be able to pull my lad through, though it very 
much depends on the old ’un’s temper. However, I shall soon 
know.” 

Old Hawker was nearly blind, and although an avaricious, sus- 
picious old man, as a general rule, trusted implicitly on ordinary 
occasions to George and Madge in the management of his accounts, 
reflecting, with some reason, that it could not be their interest to 
cheat him. Of late, however, he had been uneasy in his mind. 
Madge, there was no denying, had got through a great deal more 
money than usual, and he was not satisfied with her account of 
where it had gone. She, we know, was in the habit of supplying 
George’s extravagances in a way which tried all her ingenuity to 
hide from him, and he, mistrusting her statements, had determined 
as far as he could to watch her. 

On this occasion she laid the letter on the breakfast table, and 
waited his coming down, hoping that he might be in a good 
humour, so that there might be some chance of averting the storm 
from George. Madge was much terrified for the consequences, but 
was quite calm and firm. 

Not long before she heard his heavy step coming down the stairs, 
and soon he came into the room, evidently in no favourable state of 
mind. 

“ If you don’t kill or poison that black tom-cat,” was his first 
speech, ‘‘by the Lord I will. I suppose you keep him for some 
of your witchwork. But if he’s the devil himself, as I believe he 
is. I’ll shoot him. I won’t be kept out of my natural sleep by such 
a devil’s brat as that. He’s been keeping up such a growling and 
a scrowling on the hen-house roof all night, that I thought it was 
Old Scratch come for you, and getting impatient. If you must 
keep an imp of Satan in the house, get a mole, or a rat, or some 
quiet beast of that sort, and not such a vicious toad as him.” 

“ Shoot him after breakfast if you like,” she said. “He’s no 
friend of mine. Get your breakfast, and don’t be a fool. There’s 
a letter for you ; take and read it.” 


96 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“Yah ! Read it, she says, and knows I’m blind,” said Hawker. 
“ You artful minx, you want to read it yourself.” 

He took the letter up, and turned it over and over. He knew 
the seal, and shot a suspicious glance at her. Then, looking at 
her fixedly, he put it in his breast-pocket, and buttoned up his 
coat. 

“There!” he said. “I’ll read it. Oh yes, believe me, I’ll 
read it. You Jezebel ! ” 

“ You’d better eat your meat like a Christian man,” she 
answered, “ and not make such faces as them.” 

“ Where’s the man ? ” he asked. 

“ Outside, I suppose.” 

“ Tell him I want the gig. I’m going out for a drive. A 
pleasure drive, you know. All down the lane, and back again. 
Cut along and tell him, before I do you a mischief.” 

She saw he was in one of his evil humours, when nothing was 
to be done with him, and felt very uneasy. She went and ordered 
the gig, and when he had finished breakfast, he came out to the 
door. 

“ You’d best take your big coat,” she said, “ else you’ll be 
getting cold, and be in a worse temper than you are, — and that’s 
bad enough. Lord knows, for a poor woman to put up with.” 

“ How careful she is ! ” said Hawker. “ What care she takes 
of the old man 1 I’ve left you ten thousand pounds in my will, 
ducky. Good-bye.” 

He drove off, and left her standing in the porch. What a wild, 
tall figure she was, standing so stem and steadfast there in the 
morning sun I — a woman one would rather have for a friend than 
an enemy. 

Hawker was full of other thoughts than these. Coupling his 
other suspicions of Madge with the receipt of this letter from the 
bank, he was growing veiy apprehensive of something being wrong. 
He wanted this letter read to him, but whom could he trust ? 
Who better than his old companion Burrows, who lived in the 
valley below the Vicarage ? So, whipping up his horse, he 
drove there, but found he was out. He turned back again, 
puzzled, going slowly, and as he came to the bottom of the hill, 
below the Vicarage, he saw a tall man leaning against the gate, 
and smoking, 

“He’ll do for want of a better,” he said to himself. “He’s 
an honest-going fellow, and we’ve always been good friends, and 
done good business together, though he is one of that cursed 
Vicarage lot.” 

So he drew up when he came to the gate. “ I beg your pardon. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


97 


Mr. Troubridge,” he said, with a very different tone and manner 
to what we have been accustomed to hear him use, “ but could 
you do a kindness for a blind old man ? I have no one about me 
that I can trust since my son is gone away. I have reason to 
believe that this letter is of importance ; could you be so good as 
to read it to me ? ” 

“ I shall be happy to oblige you, Mr. Hawker,” said Tom. “ I 
am sorry to hear that your sight is so bad.” 

“ Yes ; I’m breaking fast,” said Hawker. “ However, I shan’t 
be much missed. I don’t inquire how the Vicar is, because I 
know already, and because I don’t think he would care much for 
my inquiries, after the injury my son has done him. I will break 
the seal. Now may I trouble you ? ” 

Tom Troubridge read aloud : — 

“ B. and F. Bank. [Such a date.] 

“ SiE, — May I request that you will favour me personally with 
a call, at the earliest possible opportunity, at my private office, 
166, Broad Street? I have reason to fear that two forged cheques, 
bearing your signature, have been inadvertently cashed by us. 
The amount, I am sorry to inform you, is considerable. I need 
not further urge your immediate attention. This is the third 
communication we have made to you on the subject, and are much 
surprised at receiving no answer. I hope that you ^vill be so good 
as to call at once. 

“Yours, sir, &c., P. Rollox, Manager.” 

“ I thank you, Mr. Troubridge,” said the old man, quietly and 
politely. “ You see I was not wrong when I thought that this 
letter was of importance. May I beg as a favour that you would 
not mention this to any one ? ” 

“ Certainly, Mr. Hawker. I will respect your wish. I hope 
your loss may not be heavy.” 

“ The loss will not be mine, though, will it ? ” said old Hawker. 
“ I anticipate that it will fall on the bank. It is surely at their 
risk to cash cheques. Why, a man might sign for all the money 
I have in their hands, and surely they would be answerable for 
it ? ” 

“ I am not aware how the law stands, Mr. Hawker,” said Trou- 
bridge. “ Fortunately, no one has ever thought it worth while to 
forge my name.” 

“ Well, I wish you a good day, sir, with many thanks,” said 
Hawker. “ Can I do anything for you in Exeter ? ” 

Old Hawker drove away rapidly in the direction of Exeter ; his 

8 


98 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


horse, a fine black, clearing the ground in splendid style. Although 
a cunning man, he was not quick in following a train of reasoning, 
and he was half-way to Exeter before he had thoroughly compre- 
hended his situation. And then, all he saw was that somebody 
had forged his name, and he believed that Madge knew something 
about it. 

“I wish my boy George was at home,” he said. “ He’d save 
me getting a lawyer now. I am altogether in the hands of those 
Bank folks if they like to cheat me, though it’s not likely they’d 
do that. At all events I will take Dickson with me.” 

Dickson was an attorney of good enough repute. A very clever 
quiet man, and a good deal employed by old Hawker, when his 
business was not too disreputable. Some years before. Hawker 
had brought some such excessively dirty work to his office, that 
the lawyer politely declined having anything to do with it, but 
recommended him to an attorney who he thought would undertake 
it. And from that time the old fellow treated him with marked 
respect, and spoke everywhere of him as a man to be trusted : 
such an effect had the fact of a lawyer refusing business had on 
him ! 

He reached Exeter by two o’clock, so rapidly had he driven. 
He went at once to Dickson’s, and found him at home, busy swing- 
ing the poker, in deep thought, before the fireplace in his inner 
office. He was a small man, with an impenetrable expressionless 
face, who never was known to unbend himself to a human being. 
Only two facts were known about him. One was, that he was the 
best swimmer in Exeter, and had saved several lives from drown- 
ing ; and the other was, that he gave away (for him) large sums in 
private charity. 

Such was the man who now received old* Hawker, with quiet 
politeness ; and having sent his horse round to the inn stable by 
a clerk, sat down once more by the fire, and began swinging the 
poker, and waiting for the other to begin the conversation. 

“K you are not engaged, Mr. Dickson,” said Hawker, “I 
would be much obliged to you if you could step round to the B. 
and F. Bank with me. I want you to witness what passes, and to 
read any letters or papers for me that I shall require.” 

The attorney put down the poker, got his hat, and stood waiting, 
all without a word. 

‘‘You won’t find it necessary to remark on anything that occurs, 
Mr. Dickson, unless I ask your opinion.” . ■ . - 

The attorney nodded, and whistled a tune. And then they 
started together through the crowded street. 

The bank was not far, and Hawker pushed his way in among 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


99 


the crowd of customers. It was some time before he could get 
hold of a clerk, there was so much business going on. When, at 
last, he did so, he said — “ I want to see Mr. Bollox ; he told me 
to call on him at once.” 

“ He is engaged at present,” said the clerk. “ It is quite im- 
possible you can see him.” 

“You don’t know what you are talking about, man,” said 
Hawker. “ Send in and tell him Mr. Hawker, of Drumston, is 
here.” 

“ Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawker. I have only just come 
here, and did not know you. Porter, show Mr. Hawker in.” 

They went into the formal hank parlour. There was the leather 
■writing table, the sheet almanac, the iron safe, and all the weapons 
by which bankers war against mankind, as in all other sanctuaries 
of the kind. Moreover, there was the commander-in-chief him- 
self, sitting at the table. A bald, clever, gentlemanly-looking 
man, who bowed when they came in. “ Good day, Mr. Hawker. 
I am obliged to you for calling at last. We thought something 
was wong. Mr. Hickson, I hope you are well. Are you attending 
with Mr. Hawker, or are you come on private business ? ” 

The attorney said — “ I’m come at his request,” and relapsed 
into silence. 

“ Ah ! ” said the manager. “I am, on the whole, glad that Mr. 
Hawker has brought a professional adviser with him. Though,” 
he added, laughing, “it is putting me rather at a disadvantage, 
you know. Two to one, — eh ? ” 

“ Now, gentlemen, if you wiU he so good as to close the door 
carefully, and he seated, I will proceed to business, hoping that 
you will give me your best attention. About six or eight months 
ago, — let me he particular, though,” said he, referring to some 
papers, — “ that is rather a loose way of beginning. Here it is. 
The fourth of September last year — yes. On that day, Mr. 
Hawker, a cheque was presented at this bank, drawn ‘ in favour of 
bearer,’ and signed in your name, for two hundred pounds, and 
cashed, the person who presented it being weU kno\vn here.” 

“ Who ? ” interrupted Hawker. 

“Excuse me, sir,” said the manager; “ allow me to come to 
that hereafter. You were about to say, I anticipate, that you never 
drew a cheque ‘ on bearer ’ in your life. Quite true. That ought 
to have excited attention, hut it did not till a very few weeks ago, 
our head-clerk, casting his eyes doAvn your account, remarked on 
the peculiarity, and, on examining the cheque, was inclined to 
believe that it was not in your usual handwriting. He intended 
communicating with me, but was prevented for some days by my 


L.ofC. 


100 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


absence ; and, in the meantime, another cheque, similar, but better 
imitated, was presented by the same person, and cashed, without 
the knowledge of the head-clerk. On the cheque coming into his 
hands, he reprimanded the cashier, and he and I, having more 
closely examined them, came to the conclusion that they were both 
forgeries. We immediately communicated with you, and, to our 
great surprise, received no answer either to our first or second 
application. We, however, were not idle. We ascertained that 
we could lay our hands on the utterer of the cheques at any 
moment, and tried a third letter to you, which has been suc- 
cessful.” 

“ The two letters you speak of have never reached me, Mr. 
Rollox,” said Hawker. “ I started off on the receipt of yours this 
morning — the first I saw. I am sorry, sir, that the bank should 
lose money through me ; but, by your own showing, sir, the fault 
lay with your own clerks.” 

“ I have never attempted to deny it, Mr. Hawker,” said the 
manager. “ But there are other matters to be considered. 
Before I go on, I wish to give you an opportunity of sending away 
your professional adviser, and continuing this conversation with 
me alone.” 

They both turned and looked at the lawyer. He was sitting 
with his hands in his pockets, and one would have thought he was 
whistling, only no sound came. His face showed no signs of 
intelligence in any feature save his eyes, and they were expressive 
of the wildest and most unbounded astonishment. 

“ I have nothing to do in this matter, sir,” said Hawker, “ that 
I should not wish Mr. Dickson to hear. He is an honourable 
man, and I confide in him thoroughly.” 

“ So be it, then, Mr. Hawker,” said the manager. “ I have as 
high an opinion of my friend Mr. Dickson as you have ; but I warn 
you, that some part of what will follow will touch you very un- 
pleasantly.” 

“ I don t see how,” said Hawker ; “go on, if you please.” 

“ Will you be good enough to examine these two cheques, and 
say whether they are genuine or not ? ” 

I have only to look at the amount of this large one, to pro- 
nounce it an impudent forgery,” said Hawker. “I have not 
signed so large a cheque for many years. There was one last 
January twelvemonth of £400, for the land at Highcot, and that 
is the largest, I believe, I ever gave in my life.” 

“ There can be no doubt they are forgeries. Your sight, I 
believe, is too bad to swear easily to your own signature ; but that 
is quite enough. Now, I have laid this case before our governor, 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


101 


Lord C , and he went so far as to say that, under the painful 

circumstances of the case, if you were to refund the money, the 
hank might let the matter drop ; hut that, otherwise, it would he 
their most painful duty to prosecute.” 

“ 2 refund the money!” laughed Hawker ; ‘‘you are playing 
with me, sir. Prosecute the dog ; I will come and see him hung ! 
Ha ! Ha 1 ” 

^ “ It will he a terrible thing if we prosecute the utterer of these 

cheques,” said the manager. 

“Why?” said Hawker. “By-the-hye, you know who he is, 
don’t you ? TeU me who it is ? ” 

“ Your own son, Mr. Hawker,” said the manager, almost in a 
whisper. 

Hawker rose and glared at them with such a look of deadly rage 
that they shrank from him appalled. Then, he tottered to the 
mantelpiece and leant against it, trying to untie his neckcloth with 
feehle, tremhling fingers. 

“ Open your confounded window there, Eollox,” cried the lawyer, 
starting up. “ Where’s the wine ? Look sharp, man ! ” 

Hawker waved to him impatiently to sit down, and then said, at 
first gasping for hreath, hut afterwards more quietly : 

“ Are you sure it was he that brought those cheques ? ” 

“ Certainly, sir,” said the manager. “ You may he sure it was 
he. Had it been any one else, they would not have been cashed 
without more examination ; and on the last occasion he accounted 
rather elaborately for your drawing such a large sum.” 

Hawker recovered himself and sat down. 

“Don’t be frightened, gentlemen,” he said. “Not this time, 
I’ve something to do before that comes. It won’t be long, the 
doctor says, but I must transact some business first. 0 Lord I I 
see it all now. That cursed, cursed woman and her boy have been 
hoodwinking me and playing with me all this time, have they ? 
Oh, but I’ll have my vengeance on ’em — one to the stocks, and 
another to the gallows. I, unfortunately, can’t give you any informa- 
tion where that man is that has the audacity to bear my name, sir,” 
said he to the manager. “ His mother at one time persuaded me 
that he was a child of mine ; but such infernal gipsy drabs as that 
can’t be depended on, you know. I have the honour to wish you 
a very good afternoon, sir, thanking you for your information, and 
hoping your counsel will secure a speedy conviction. I shall pro- 
bably trouble you to meet me at a magistrate’s to-morrow morning, 
where I wiU take my oath in his presence that those cheques are 
forgeries. You will find alterations in my banker’s book, too, I 
expect. We’ll look into it aU to-morrow. Come along, Dickson, 


102 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


my sly little weasel ; I’ve a gay night’s work for you ; I’m going 
to leave all my property to my cousin Nick, my bitterest enemy, 
and a lawsuit with it that’ll break his heart. There’s fun for the 
lawj^ers, — eh, my boy ! ” 

So talking, the old man strode firmly forth, with a bitter, malig- 
nant scowl on his flushed face. The lawyer followed him, and, 
when they were in the street. Hawker again asked him to come to 
the inn and make his will for him. 

“ I’ll stay by you. Hawker, and see that you don’t make a fool 
of yourself. I wish you would not be so vindictive. It’s indecent ; 
you’ll be ashamed of it to-morrow ; but, in the meantime, it’s 
indecent.” 

“Ha, ha!” laughed Hawker; “how quietly he talks! One 
can see that he hasn’t had a bastard child fathered on him by a 
gipsy hag. Come along, old fellow ; there’s fifty pounds’ worth of 
work for you this week, if I only live through it ! ” 

He took the lawyer to the inn, and they got dinner. Hawker 
ate but little, for him, but drank a good deal. Dickson thought he 
was getting drunk ; but when dinner was over, and Hawker had 
ordered in spirits-and-water, he seemed sober enough again. 

“ Now, Mr. Dickson,” said he, “ I am going to make a fresh 
will to-morrow morning, and I shall want you to draw it up for me. 
After that I want you to come home with me and transact business. 
You will do a good day’s work, I promise you. You seem to me 
now to be the only man in the world I can trust. I pray you don’t 
desert me.” 

“ As I said before,” replied the lawyer, “ I won’t desert you ; 
but listen to me. I don’t half like the sudden way you have turned 
against your own son. Why don’t you pay this money, and save 
the disgrace of that unhappy young man ? I don’t say anything 
about your disinheriting him — that’s no business of mine — but don’t 

be witness against him. The bank, or rather my Lord C , has 

been very kind about it. Take advantage of their kindness and 
hush the matter up.” 

“ I know you ain’t in the pay of the bank,” said Hawker, “ so 
I won’t charge you with it. I know you better than to think you’d 
lend yourself to anything so mean ; but your conduct looks suspicious. 
If you hadn’t done me a few disinterested kindnesses lately, I 
should say that they’d paid you to persuade me to stop this, so as 
they might get their money back, and save the cost of a prosecu- 
tion. But I ain’t so far gone as to believe that ; and so I tell you, 
as one man to another, that if you’d come suddenly on such a mine 
of treason and conspiracy as I have this afternoon, and found a lad 
that you have treated as, and tried to believe was, your ovii son. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


103 


you’d be as bad as me. Every moment I think of it, it comes out 
clearer. That woman that lives with me has palmed that brat of 
hers on me as my child ; and he and she have been plundering me 
these years past. The money that woman has made away with 
would build a ship, sir. What she’s done with it, her master, the 
devil, only knows ; and I’ve said nought about it, because she’s a 
witch, and I was afraid of her. But now I’ve found her out. She 
has stopped the letters that they wrote to me about this boy’s 
forgery, and that shows she was in it. She shall pack. I won’t 
prosecute her ; no. I’ve reasons against that ; but I’ll turn her 
out in the world without a sixpence. You see I’m quiet enough 
now ! ” 

“You’re quiet enough,” said the lawyer, “and you’ve stated 
your case very well. But are you sure this lad is not your 
son ? ” 

“ If I was sure that he was,” said Hawker, “ it wouldn’t make 
any difference, as I know on. Ah, man, you don’t know what a 
rage I’m in. If I chose, I could put myself into such an infernal 
passion at this moment as would bring on a ’plectic fit, and lay me 
dead on the floor. But I won’t do it, not yet. I’ll have another 
drop of brandy, and sing you a song. Shall I give ’ee ‘ Roger 
a-Maying,’ or what’ll ye have ? ” 

“ I’ll have you go to bed, and not take any more brandy,” said 
the lawyer. “ If you sing, get in one of the waiters, and sing to 
him ; he’d enjoy it. I’m going home, but I shall come to break- 
fast to-morrow morning, and find you in a different humour.” 

“ Good night, old mole,” said Hawker ; “ good night, old bat, 
old parchment skin, old sixty per cent. Ha, ha ! If a wench 
brings a brat to thee, old lad, chuck it out o’ window, and her 
after it. Thou can only get hung for it, man. They can only 
hang thee once, and that is better than to keep it and foster it, 
and have it turn against thee when it grows up. Good night.” 

Dickson came to him in the morning, and found him in the 
same mind. They settled down to business, and Hawker made a 
new will. He left all his property to his cousin (a man he had 
had a bitter quarrel with for years), except £100 to his groom, 
and £200 to Tom Troubridge, “for an act of civility” (so the 
words ran), “ in reading a letter for a man who ought to have been 
his enemy.” And when the will (a very short one) was finished, 
and the law;^"er proposed getting two of his clerks as witnesses. 
Hawker told him to fold it up and keep it ; that he would get it 
witnessed by-and-by. 

“You’re coming home with me,” he said, “and we’ll get it 
witnessed there. You’ll see why, when it’s done.” 


104 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


Then they went to the manager of the bank, and got him to go 
before a magistrate with him, whilst he deposed on oath that the 
two cheques, before mentioned, were forgeries, alleging that his life 
was so uncertain that the criminal might escape justice by his 
sudden death. Then he and Dickson went back to the inn, and 
after dinner started together to drive to Drumston. 

They had been so engaged with business that they had taken 
no notice of the weather. But when they were clear of the northern 
suburbs of the to^vn, and were flying rapidly along the noble turn- 
pike -road that turning eastward skirts the broad Exe for a couple 
of miles before turning north again, they remarked that a dense 
black cloud hung before them, and that everything foreboded a 
violent thunder-storm. 

“We shall get a dro'wning before we reach your place. Hawker,” 
said the lawyer. “ I’m glad I brought my coat.” 

“ Lawyers never get dro^vned,” said Hawker, “ though I believe 
you have tried it often enough.” 

When they crossed the bridge, and turned to the north, along 
the pretty banks of the Greedy, they began to hope that they would 
leave it on the right ; but ere they reached Newton St. Gyres they 
saw that Jt was creeping up overhead, and stopping a few minutes 
in that village, perceived that the folks were all out at their doors 
talking to one another, as people do for company’s sake when a 
storm is coming on. 

Before they got to Grediton they could distinguish, above the 
sound of the wheels, the thunder groaning and muttering 
perpetually, and as they rattled quickly past the grand old minster 
a few drops of rain began to fall. 

The boys were coming out of the Grammar School in shoals, 
laughing, running, whooping, as the manner of boys is. Hawker 
drove slowly as he passed through the crowd, and tlie lawyer' took 
that opportunity to put on his great-coat. 

“ We’ve been lucky so far,” he said, “ and now we are going 
to pay for our good luck. Before it is too late. Hawker, pull up 
and stay here. If we have to stop all night. I’ll pay expenses ; I 
will indeed. It will be dark before we are home. Do stop.” 

“ Not for a thousand pound,” said Hawker. “ I wouldn’t baulk 
myself now for a thousand pound. Hey ! fancy turning her out 
such a night as this without sixpence in her pocket. Why, a man 
like you, that all the county knows, a man who has got two gold 
medals for bravery, ain’t surely afraid of a thunderstorm ? ” 

“ I ain’t afraid of the thunderstorm, but I am of the rheumatism,” 
said the other. “As for a thunderstorm, you’re as safe out of 
doors as in; some say safer. But you’re mistaken if you 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


105 


suppose I don’t fear death, Hawker. I fear it as much as any 
man.” 

“ It didn’t look like it that time you soused in over the weir 
after the groom lad,” said Hawker. 

“Bah! man,” said the lawyer; “I’m the best swimmer in 
Devon. That was proved by my living in that weir in flood time. 
So I have less to fear than any one else. Why, if that boy 
hadn’t been as quiet and plucky as he was, I knew I could kick 
him off any minute, and get ashore. Hallo ; that’s nearer.” 

The storm burst on them in full fury, and soon after it grew 
dark. The good horse, however, stepped out gallantly, though 
they made but little way ; for, having left the high road and taken 
to the narrow lanes, their course was always either up hill or 
down, and every bottom they passed grew more angry with the 
flooding waters as they proceeded. Still, through darkness, rain, 
and storm, they held their way till they saw the lights of Drum- 
ston below them. 

“How far is it to your house. Hawker?” said the lawyer. 
“ This storm seems to hang about still. It is as bad as ever. 
You must be very wet.” 

“ It’s three miles to my place, but a level road, at least all up- 
hill, gently rising. Cheer up I We won’t be long.” 

They passed through the village rapidly, lighted by the light- 
ning. The last three miles were done as quickly as any part of 
the journey, and the lawyer rejoiced to find himself before the 
white gate that led up to Hawker’s house. 

It was not long before they drew up to the door. The storm 
seemed worse than ever. There was a light in the kitchen, and 
when Hawker had halloed once or twice, a young man ran out to 
take the horse. 

“Is that you, my boy?” said Hawker. “Rub the horse 
down, and come in to get something. This ain’t a night fit for a 
dog to be out in ; is it ? ” 

“No, indeed, sir,” said the man. “I hope none’s out in it 
but what likes to be.” 

They went in. Madge looked up from arranging the table for 
supper, and stared at Hawker keenly. He laughed aloud, and said, — 

“ So you didn’t expect me to-night, deary, eh ? ” 

“ You’ve chose a bad night to come home in, old man,” she 
answered. 

“ A terrible night, ain’t it ? Wouldn’t -she have been anxious 
if she’d a’ known I’d been out ? ” 

“ Don’t know as I should,” she said. “That gentleman had 
better get dried, and have his supper.” 


106 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


I’ve got a bit of business first, deary. Where’s the girl ? ’’ 

“ In the other kitchen.” 

“ Call her. — Lord ! listen to that.” 

A crash of thunder shook the house, heard loud above the rain, 
which beat furiously against the windows. Madge immediately 
returned with the servant girl, a modest, quiet-looking creature, 
evidently in terror at the storm. 

“ Get out that paper, Dickson, and we’ll get it signed.” 

The lawyer produced the will, and Madge and the servant girl 
were made to witness it. Dickson, having dried the signatures, 
took charge of it again ; and then Hawker turned round fiercely 
to Madge. 

“That’s my new will,” he said; “my new will, old woman. 
Oh, you cat ! I’ve found you out.” 

Madge saw a storm was coming, worse than the one which raged 
and rattled outside, and she braced her nerves to meet it. 

“ What have you found out, old man ? ” she said quietly. 

“ I’ve found out that you and that young scoundrel have been 
robbing and cheating me in a way that would bring me to the 
workhouse in another year. I have found out that he has forged 
my name for nearly a thousand pounds, and that you’ve helped 
him. I find that you yourself have robbed me of hundreds of 
pounds, and that I have been blinded, and cozened, and hood- 
winked by two that I kept from the workhouse, and treated as well 
as I treated myself. That’s what I have found out, gipsy.” 

“Well?” was all Madge said, standing before him with her 
arms folded. 

“ So I say,” said Hawker; “it is very well. The mother to 
the streets, and the boy to the gallows.” 

“ You wouldn’t prosecute him, William ; your o^vn son ? ” 

“ No, I shan’t,” he replied ; — “ but the Bank will.” 

“ And couldn’t you stop it ? ” 

“ I could. , But if holding up my little finger would save him, 
I wouldn’t do it.” 

“Oh, William,” she cried, throwing herself on her knees; 
“ don’t look like that. I confess everything ; visit it on me, but 
spare that boy.” 

“ You confess, do you ? ” he said. “ Get up. Get out of my 
house ; you shan’t stay here.” 

But she would not go, but hanging round him, kept saying, 
“ Spare the boy, William, spare the boy ! ” over and again, till 
he struck her in his fury, and pulled her towards the door. 

“ Get out and herd with the gipsies you belong to,” he said. 
“ You witch, you can’t cry now.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


107 


‘‘ But,” she moaned, “ oh, not such a night as this, William ; 
not to-night. I am frightened of the storm. Let me stay to- 
night. I am frightened of the lightning. Oh, I wouldn’t turn 
out your dog such a night as this.” 

“ Out, out, you devil ! ” 

“ Oh, William, only one — ” 

“ Out, you Jezebel, before I do you a mischief.” 

He had got the heavy door open, and she passed out, moaning 
low to herself. Out into the fierce rain and the black darkness ; 
and the old man held open the door for a minute, to see if she 
were gone. 

No. A broad, flickering riband of light ineffable wavered for 
an instant of time before his eyes, lighting up the country far and 
wide ; hut plainly visible between him and the blaze was a tall, 
dark, hare-headed woman, wildly raising her hands above her 
head, as if imploring vengeance upon him, and, ere the terrible 
explosion which followed had ceased to shake the old house to its 
foundations, he shut the door, and went muttering alone up to 
his solitary chamber. 

The next morning the groom came into the lawyer’s room, and 
informed him that when he went to call his master in the morning, 
he had found the bed untouched, and Hawker sitting half un- 
dressed in his arm-chair, dead and cold 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE major’s visit TO THE “ NAG’s-HEAD.” 

Major Buckley and his wife stood together in the verandah of 
their cottage, watching the storm. All the afternoon they had 
seen it creeping higher and higher, blacker and more threatening 
up the eastern heavens, until it grew painful to wait any longer 
for its approach. But now that it had burst on them, and night 
had come on dark as pitch, they felt the pleasant change in the 
atmosphere, and, in spite of the continuous gleam of the lightning, 
and the eternal roll and crackle of the thunder, they had come out 
to see the beauty and majesty of the tempest. 

They stood with their arms entwined for some time, in silence ; 
but after a crash louder than any of those which had preceded it. 
Major Buckley said : — 


108 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ My dearest Agnes, you are very courageous in a thunder- 
storm.” 

“ Why not, James ? ” she said ; “ you cannot avoid the light- 
ning, and the thunder won’t harm you. Most women fear the 
sound of the thunder more than anything, but I suspect that 
Ciudad Rodrigo made more noise than this, husband ? ” 

“ It did indeed, my dear. More noise than I ever heard in any 
storm yet. It is coming nearer.” 

“ I am afraid it will shake the poor Vicar very much,” said Mrs. 
Buckley. “ Ah, there is Sam crying.” 

They both went into the sitting-room ; little Sam had petitioned 
to go to bed on the sofa till the storm was over, and now, 
awakened by the thunder, was sitting up in his bed, crying out for 
his mother. 

The Major went in and lay do^vn by the child on the sofa, to 
quiet him. “ What ! ” said he, “ Sammy, you’re not afraid of 
thunder, are you ? ” 

“Yes! I am,” said the child; “very much indeed. I am 
glad you are come, father.” 

“ Lightning never strikes good hoys, Sam,” said the Major. 

“ Are you sure of that, father ? ” said the little one. 

That was a poser ; so the Major thought it best to counterfeit 
sleep ; hut he overdid it, and snored so loud, that the boy began 
to laugh, and his father had to practise his deception with less 
noise. And by degrees, the little hand that held his moustache 
dropped feebly on the bedclothes, and the Major, ascertaining by 
the child’s regular breathing that his son was asleep, gently raised 
his vast length, and proposed to his wife to come into the verandah 
again. 

“ The storm is breaking, my love,” said he ; “ and the air is 
deliciously cool out there. Put your shawl on and come out.” 

They went out again ; the lightning was still vivid, but the 
thunder less loud. Straight dovm the garden from them 
stretched a broad gravel walk, which now, cut up by the rain into 
a hundred water channels, showed at each flash like rivers of 
glittering silver. Looking down this path toward the black wood 
during one of the longest continued illuminations of the lightning, 
they saw for an instant a dark, tall figure, apparently advancing 
towards them. Then all the prospect was wrapped again in ten- 
fold gloom. 

Mrs. Buckley uttered an exclamation, and held tighter to her 
husband’s arm. Every time the garden was lit up, they saw the 
figure nearer and nearer, till they knew that it was standing 
before them in the darkness ; the Major was about to speak, when 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


109 


a hoarse voice, heard indistinctly above the rushing of the rain, 
demanded ; 

“ Is that Major Buckley ? ” 

At the same minute the storm-light blazed up once more, and 
fell upon an object so fearful and startling that they both fell back 
amazed. A woman was standing before them, tall, upright, and 
bareheaded ; her long black hair falling over a face as white and 
ghastly as a three days’ corpse ; her wild countenance rendered 
more terrible by the blue glare of the lightning shining on the 
rain that streamed from every lock of her hair and every shred of 
her garments. She looked like some wild daughter of the 
storm, who had lost her way, and came wandering to them for 
shelter. 

“I am Major Buckley,” was the answer. “ What do you 
want? But in God’s name come in out of the rain.” 

“ Come in and get your things dried, my good woman,” said 
Mrs. Buckley. “ What do you want with my husband such a 
night as this ? ” 

“ Before I dry my things, or come in, I will state my business,” 
said the woman, coming under the verandah. “ After that I will 
accept your hospitality. This is a night when polecats and rabbits 
would shelter together in peace ; and yet such a night as this, a 
man turns out of his house the woman who has lain beside him 
twenty years.” 

“ Who are you, my good soul ? ” said the Major. 

“ They call me Madge the Witch,” she said ; “I lived with 
old Hawker, at the Woodlands, till to-night, and he has turned me 
out. I want to put you in possession of some intelligence that 
may save much misery to some that you love.” 

“ I can readily believe that you can do it,” said the Major, “ but 
pray don’t stand there ; come in with my wife, and get your things 
dried.” 

‘‘Wait till you hear what I have to say : George Hawker, my 
son — ” 

“ Your son — good God ! ” 

“ I thought you would have known that. The Vicar does. 
Well, this son of mine has run off with the Vicar’s daughter.” 

“ Well ? ” 

“ Well, he has committed forgery. It’ll be known all over the 
country to-morrow, and even now I fear the runners are after him. 
If he is taken before he marries that girl, things will be only worse 
than they are. But never mind whether he does or not, perhaps 
you differ with me ; perhaps you think that, if you could find the 
girl now, you could stop her and bring her home ; but you don’t 


110 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


know where she is. I do, and if you will give me your solemn 
word of honour as a gentleman to give him warning that his 
forgery for five hundred pounds is discovered, I will give you his 
direction.” 

The Major hesitated for a moment, thinking. 

“ If you reflect a moment, you must see how straightforward 
my story is. What possible cause can I have to mislead you ? I 
know which way you will decide, so I wait patiently.” 

“ I think I ought to say yes, my love,” said the Major to his 
wife ; “if it turned out afterwards that I neglected any opportunity 
of saving this poor girl (particularly if this tale of the forgery be 
true), I should never forgive myself.” 

“ I agree with you, my dear,” said Mrs. Buckley. “ Give your 
promise, and go to seek her.” 

“Well, then,” said the Major; “I give you my word of 
honour that I will give Hawker due warning of his forgery being 
discovered, if you will give me his direction. I anticipate that 
they are in London, and I shall start to-night, to he in time for 
the morning coach. Now, will you give me the address ? ” 

“ Yes ! ” said Madge. “ They are at the Nag’s Head, Buck- 
ingham Street, Strand, London ; can you remember that ? ” 

“ I know where the street is,” said the Major ; “ now will you 
go into the kitchen, and make yourself comfortable ? My dear, 
you will see my valise packed ? Ellen, get this person’s clothes 
dried, and get her some hot wine. By-the-bye,” said he, 
following her into the kitchen, “ you must have had a terrible 
quarrel with Hawker, for him to send you out such a night as 
this ? ” 

“ It was about this matter,” she said : “ the boy forged on his 
father, and I knew it, and tried to screen him. My own son, you 
know.” 

“ It was natural enough,” said the Major. “ You are not 
deceiving me, are you ? I don’t see why you should, though.” 

“ Before God, I am not. I only want the boy to get warning.” 

“ You must sleep here to-night,” said the Major ; “ and to- 
morrow you can go on your way, though, if you cannot conveniently 
get away in the morning, don’t hurry, you know. My house is 
never shut against unfortunate people. I have heard a great deal 
of you, but I never saw you before ; you must be aware, however, 
that the character you have held in the place is not such as 
warrants me in asking you to stay here for any time.” 

The Major left the kitchen, and crossed the yard. In a bed- 
room above the stable slept his groom, a man who had been 
through his campaigns with him from first to last* It was to 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


Ill 


waken nim that the Major took his way up the narrow stairs to- 
wards the loft. 

‘‘ Jim,” he said, “ I want my horse in an hour.” 

The man was out of bed in a moment, and while he was dressing, 
the Major continued : — 

“ You know Buckingham Street, Strand, Jim, don’t you ? When 
you were recruiting you used to hang out at a public-house there, 
unless I am mistaken.” 

“ Exactly so, sir ! We did ; and a many good chaps we picked 
up there, gents and all sorts. Why, it was in that worry place. 
Major, as we ’listed Lundon ; him as was afterwards made ser- 
geant for being the first man into Sebastian, and arterwards 
married Skettles : her as fell out of eighteen stories at Brussels 
looking after the Duke, and she swore at them as came to pick 
her up, she did ; and walked in at the front door as bold as 
brass.” 

“ There, my good lad,” said the Major ; “what’s the good of 
telling such stories as that ? Nobody believes them, you know. 
Do you know the Nag’s Head there ? It’s a terribly low place, is 
it not ? ” 

“It’s a much changed if it ain’t, sir,” said Jim, putting on his 
breeches. “ I was in there not eighteen months since. It’s a 
fighting-house ; and there used to be a dog show there, and a 
reunion of vocal talent, and all sorts of villanies.” 

“ WeU, see to the horse, Jim, and I’ll sing out when I’m 
ready,” said the Major, and went back into the house. 

He came back through the kitchen, and saw that Madge was 
being treated by the maids with that respect that a reputed witch 
never fails to command ; then, having sat for some time talking 
to his wife, and finding that the storm was cleared off, he kissed 
his sleeping child and its mother, and mounting his liorse in the 
stable-yard, rode off towards Exeter. 

In the morning, when Mrs. Buckley came down stairs, she 
inquired for Madge. They told her she had been up some time, 
and, having got some breakfast, was walking up and down in 
front of the house. Going there, Mrs. Buckley found her. Her 
dress was re-arranged with picturesque neatness, and a red 
handkerchief pinned over her rich dark hair, that last night had 
streamed wild and wet in the tempest. Altogether, she looked an 
utterly different being from the strange, storm-beaten creature 
who had craved their hospitality the night before. Mrs. Buckley 
admired the bold, upright, handsome figure before her, and gave 
her a cheery “ good morning.” 

“I only stayed,” said Madge, “to wish you good-bye, and thank 


112 


THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 


you for your kindness. When they who should have had some pity 
on me turned me out, you took me in ! ” 

“ You are heartily welcome,” said Mrs. Buckley. “ Cannot X 
do more for you ? Do you want money ? I fear you must ! ” 

“ None, I thank you kindly,” she replied ; “ that would break 
the spell. Good-bye ! ” 

“ Good-bye ! ” said Mrs. Buckley. 

Madge stood in front of the door and raised her hand. 

“ The blessing of God,” she said, “ shall be upon the house of 
the Buckleys, and more especially upon you and your husband, 
and the boy that is sleeping inside. He shall be a brave and a 
good man, and his wife shall be the fairest and best in the country 
side. Your kine shall cover the plains until no man can number 
them, and your sheep shall be like the sands of the sea. When 
misfortune and death and murder fall upon yom' neighbours, you 
shall stand between the dead and the living, and the troubles that 
pass over your heads shall be like the shadow of the light clouds 
that fly across the moor on a sunny day. And when in your ripe 
and honoured old age you shall sit with your husband, in a garden 
of your own planting, in the lands far away, and see your grand- 
children playing around you, you shall think of the words of the 
wild, lost gipsy woman, who gave you her best blessing before she 
went away and was seen no more.” 

Mrs. Buckley tried to say “Amen,” but found herself crying. 
Something there was in that poor creature, homeless, penniless, 
friendless, that made her heart like wax. She watched her as 
she strode down the path, and afterwards looked for .her re- 
appearing on a high exposed part of the road, a quarter of a mile 
off, thinking she would take that way. But she waited long, and 
never again saw that stem, tall figure, save in her dreams. 

She turned at last, and one of the maids stood beside her. 

“ Oh, missis,” she said, “ you’re a lucky woman to-day. 
There’s some in this parish would have paid a hundred pounds 
for such a fortune as tliat from her. It’ll come true, — vou will 
see ! ” 

“ I hope it may, you silly giii,” said Mrs. Buckley ; and then 
she went in and knelt beside her sleeping boy, and prayed that 
the blessing of the gipsy woman might be fulfilled. 

****** 

It was quite late on the evening of his second day’s journey that 
the Major, occupying the box-seat of the “ Exterminator,” dashed 
with comet-like speed through so much of the pomps and vanities 
of this wicked world as showed itself in Piccadilly at half-past 
seven on a spring afternoon. 


GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 


113 


“Hah!” he soliloquised, passing Hyde-park Comer, “these 
should be the folks going out to dinner. They dine later and 
later every year. At this rate they’ll dine at half-past one in 
twenty years’ time. That’s the Duke’s new house ; eh, coach- 
man ? By George, there’s his Grace himself, on his brown cob ; 
God bless him ! There are a pair of good- stepping horses, and 

old Lady E behind ’em, by Jove ! — in her war-paint and 

feathers — pinker than ever. She hasn’t got tired of it yet. 
She’d dance at her own funeral if she could. And there’s Charley 
Bridgenorth in the club balcony — I wonder what he finds to do in 

peace time? — and old B talking to him. What does Charley 

mean by letting himself be seen in the same balcony with that 
disreputable old fellow? I hope he won’t get his morals cor- 
rupted ! Ah ! So here we are 1 eh ? ” 

He dismounted at the White Horse Cellar, and took a hasty 
’dinner. His great object was speed ; and so he hardly allowed 
himself ten minutes to finish his pint of port before he started 
into the street, to pursue the errand on which he had come. 

It was nearly nine o’clock, and he thought he would be able to 
reach his destination in ten minutes. But it was otherwise 
ordered. His evil genius took him do^vn St. James’s Street. He 
tried to persuade himself that it was the shortest way, though he 
knew all the time that it wasn’t. And so he was punished in this 
way : he had got no further than Crockford’s, when, in the glare 
of light opposite the door of that establishment, he saw three 
men. standing, one of whom was talking and laughing in a tone 
perhaps -a little louder than it is customary to use in the streets 
nowadays. Buckley knew that voice well (better, perhaps, among 
the crackle of musketry than in the streets of London), and, as 
the broad-shouldered owmer of it turned his jolly, handsome face 
towards him, he could not suppress a low laugh of satisfaction. 
At the same moment the before -mentioned man recognised him, 
and shouted out his name. 

“ Busaco Buckley, by the Lord,” he said, “revisiting once more 
the glimpses of the gas lamps I My dear old fellow, how are you, 
and where do you come from ? ” 

The Major found himself quickly placed under a lamp for in- 
spection, and surrounded by three old and well-beloved fellow- 
campaigners. What could a man do under the circumstances ? 
Nothing, if human and infallible, I should say, but what 
the Major did — stay there, laughing and joking, and talking 
of old times, and freshen up his honest heart, and shake his 
honest sides with many ,an old half- forgotten tale of fun and 
mischief. 


9 


114 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“Now,” he said at last, “ you must let me go. You Barton 
(to the first man he recognised), you are a married man; what 
are you doing at Crockford’s ? ” 

“The same as you are,” said the other, — “standing outside 
the door. The pavement’s free, I suppose. I haven’t been in 
such a place these five years. Where are you staying, old boy?” 

Tlie Major told them, and they agreed to meet at breakfast next 
morning. Then, after many farewells, and callings back, he pur- 
sued his way towards the Strand, finding to his disgust that it was 
nearly ten o’clock. 

He, nevertheless, held on his way undiscouraged, and turning 
by degrees into narrower and narrower streets, came at last on 
one quieter than the others, which ended abruptly at the river. 

It was a quiet street, save at one point, and that was where a 
blaze of gas (then recently introduced, and a great object of curio- 
sity to the Major) was thrown across the street, from the broad 
ornamented windows of a flash public-house. Here there was 
noise enough. Two men fighting, and three or four more en- 
couraging, while a half- drunken woman tried to separate them. 
From the inside, too, came a noise of singing, quarrelling, and 
swearing, such as made the Major .cross the road, and take his 
way on the darker side of the street. 

But when he got opposite the aforesaid public-house, he saw 
that it was called the “ Nag’s Head,” and that it was kept by one 
J. Trotter. “What an awful place to take that girl to !” said the 
Major. “ But there may be some private entrance, and a quiet 
part of the house set by for a hotel.” Nevertheless, having looked 
well about him, he could see nothing of the sort, and perceived 
that he must storm the bar. 

But he stood irresolute for a moment. It looked such a very 
low place, clean and handsome enough, but still the company 
about the door looked so very disreputable. “ J. Trotter ! ” he 
reflected. “ Why, that must be Trotter the fighting-man. I 
hope it may be ; he will remember me.” 

So he crossed. When he came within the sphere of the gas 
lamps, those who were assisting at the fight grew silent, and 
gazed upon him with open eyes. As he reached the door one of 
them remarked, with a little flourish of oaths as a margin or gar- 
land round his remark, that “ of all the swells he’d ever seen, 
that ’un was the biggest, at aU events.” 

Similarly, when they in the bar saw that giant form, the blue 
coat and brass buttons, and, above all, the moustache (sure sign 
of a military man in those days), conversation ceased, and the 
Major then and there became the event of the evening. He 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


115 


looked round as he came in, and, through a door leading inwards, 
he saw George Hawker himself, standing tallying to a man with a 
dog under each arm. 

The Major was not deceived as to the identity of J. Trotter. 
J. Trotter, the hero of a hundred fights, stood himself behind his 
own bar, a spectacle for the gods. A chest like a bull, a red 
neck, straight up and down with the back of his head, and a fist 
like a seal’s flipper, proclaimed him the prize-fighter ; and his 
bright grey eye, and ugly laughing face, proclaimed him. the merry, 
good-humoured varlet that he was. 

What a wild state of amazement he was in when he realised 
the fact that Major Buckley of the — th was actually towering 
aloft under the chandelier, and looking round for some one to 
address ! With what elephantine politeness and respect did he 
show the Major into a private parlour, sweeping ofi* at one round 
nearly a dozen pint-pots that covered the table, and then, shutting 
the door, stand bowing and smiling before his old pupil ! 

“ And so you are gone into business, John, are you ? ” said the 
Major. “ I’m glad to see it. I hope you are doing as well as 
you deserve.” 

“ Much better than that,” said the prize-fighter. “ Much 
better than that, sir, I assure you.” 

“ Well, I’m going to get you to do something for me,” said 
the Major. “ Do you know, John, that you are terribly fat ? ” 

“ The business alius does make flesh, sir. More especially 
to coves as has trained much.” 

“ Yes, yes, John, I am going from the point. There is a 
young man of the name of Hawker here ? ” 

The prize-fighter remained silent, but a grin gathered on his 
face. “I never contradicts a gentleman,” he said. “And if 
you say he’s here, why, in course, he is here. But I don’t say 
he’s here ; you mind that, sir.” 

“ My good fellow, I saw him as I came in,” said the Major. 

“Oh, indeed,” said the other; “then that absolves me from any 
responsibility. He told me to deny him to everybody but one, 
and you ain’t she. He spends a deal of money with me, sir ; so, 
in course, I don’t want to offend him. By-the-bye, sir, excuse 
me for a moment.” 

The Major saw that he had got hold of the right man, and 
waited willingly. The fighting-man went to the door, and called 
out, “ My dear.” A tall, good-looking woman came to the bar, 
who made a low curtsey on being presented to the Major. “ My 
dear,” repeated Trotter, “ the south side.” “ The particular, 
I suppose,” she said. “ In course,” said he. So she soon ap- 


116 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


peared with a bottle of Madeira, which was of such quality that 
the Major, having tasted it, winked at the prize-fighter, and the 
latter laughed, and rubbed his hands. 

“ Now,” said the Major, “ do you mind telling me whether this 
Hawker is here alone ? ” 

“He don’t live here. He only comes here ^of a day, and 
sometimes stays till late. This evening a pretty young lady — ^yes, 
a lady — come and inquired for him in my bar, and I was struck 
all of a heap to see such a creature in such a place, all frightened 
out of her wits. So I showed her through in a minute, and 
up stairs to where my wife sits, and she waited there till he come 
in. And she hadn’t been gone ten minutes when you come.” 

The Major swore aloud, without equivocation or disguise. 
“Ah,” he said, “ ifl had not met Barton! Pray, Trotter, have 
you any idea where Hawker lives ? ” 

“ Not the least in the world, further than it’s somewhere 
Hampstead way. That’s a thing he evidently don’t want 
known.” 

“ Do you think it likely that he and that young lady live in the 
same house ? I need not disguise from you that I am come after 
her, to endeavour to get her hack to her family.” 

“ I know they don’t live in the same house,” said Trotter, 
“because I heard her say to-night, before she went away, ‘Do 
look round, George,’ she says, ‘ at my house for ten minutes, 
before you go home.’ ” 

“ You have done me a great kindness,” said the Major, “ in 
what you have told me. I don’t know how to thank you.” 

“It’s only one,” said the prize-fighter, “ in return for a many 
you done me ; and you are welcome to it, sir.. Now, I expect 
you’d like to see this young gent ; so follow me if you please.” 

Through many passages, past many doors, he followed him, 
until they left the noise of the revelry behind, and at last, at the 
end of a long dark passage, the prize-fighter suddenly threw open 
a door, and announced — “Major Buckley I ” 

^ There were four men playing at cards, and the one opposite to 
him was George Hawker. The Major saw at a glance, almost 
before any one had time to speak, that George was losing money, 
and that the other three were confederates. 

The prize-fighter went up to the table and seized the cards ; 
then, after a momentary examination, threw both packs in the 
fire. 

“ When gents play cards in my house, I expect them to use the 
cards I provides at the bar, and not private packs, whether marked 
or not. Mr. Hawker, I warned you before about this ; you’ll lose 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


117 


every sixpence you’re worth,- and then you will say it was done at 
my house, quite forgetting to mention that I warned you of it 
repeatedly.” 

But George took no notice of him. “ Really, Major Buckley,” 
he began, “ this is rather — ” 

“ Rather an intrusion, you would say — eh, Mr. Hawker ? ” 
said the Major ; “so it is, hut the urgency of my business must 
be my apology. Can you give me a few words alone ? ” 

George rose and came out with them. The prize-fighter 
showed them into another room, and the Major asked him to 
stand in the passage, and see that no one was listening; “you 
see, John,” he added, “we are very anxious not to be over- 
heard.” 

“I am not at all particular myself,” said George Hawker. “I 
have nothing to conceal.” 

“ You will alter your mind before I have done, sir,” said the 
Major. 

George didn’t like the look of affairs. — How came it that the 
Major and the prize-fighter knew one another so well ? What did 
the former mean by all this secrecy ? He determined to put a 
bold face on the matter. 

“ Miss Thornton is living with you, sir, I believe ? ” began the 
Major. 

“ Not at all, sir ; Miss Thornton is in lodgings of her own. I 
have the privilege of seeing her for a few hours every day. In 
fact, I may go as far as to say that I am engaged to be married 
to her, and that that auspicious event is to come off on Thursday 
week.” 

“ May I ask you to favour me with her direction ? ” said the Major. 

“ I am sorry to disoblige you. Major Buckley, but I must really 
decline,” answered George. “ I am not unaware how disinclined 
her family are to the connexion ; and, as I cannot but believe that 
you come on* their behalf, I cannot think that an interview would 
be anything but prejudicial to my interest. I must remind you, 
too, that Miss Thornton is of age, and her own mistress in every 
way.” 

While George had been speaking, it passed through the 
Major’s mind : “ What a checkmate it would be, if I were to 
withhold the information I have, and set the runners on him, here ! 
I might save the girl, and further the ends of justice ; but my 
hands are tied by the promise I gave that woman, — how un- 
fortunate I ” 

“Then, Mr. Hawker,” he said aloud, “I am to understand 
that you refuse me this address ? ” 


118 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ I am necessitated to refuse it most positively, sir.” 

“ I am sorry for it. I leave it to your conscience. Now, I 
have got a piece of intelligence to give you, which I fear will be 
somewhat unpalatable — I got your address at this place from a 
woman of the name of Madge — ” ^ 

“ You did ! ” exclaimed George. 

“ Who was turned out of doors by your father, the night before 
last, in consequence, I understood, of some misdeeds of hers 
having come to light. She came immediately to my house, and 
offered to give me your direction, on condition of my passing my 
word of honour to deliver you this message : ‘ that the forgery 
(£500 was the sum mentioned, I think) was discovered, and that 
the Bank was going to prosecute.’ I of course form no judgment 
as to the truth or falsehood of this : I leave you to take your own 
measures about it — only I once again ask you whether you will 
give me an interview .with Miss Thornton ? ” 

George had courage enough left to say hoarsely and firmly, , 
“No!” 

“ Then,” replied the Major, “ I must call you to mtness that I 
have performed my errand to you faithfully. I beg, also, that you 
will carry all our kindest remembrances to Miss Thornton, and tell 
her that her poor father was struck with paralysis when he missed 
her, and that he is not expected to live many weeks. And I wish 
you good night.” 

He passed out, and down the stairs ; as he passed the public 
parlour-door, he heard a man bawling out a song, two or three 
lines of which he heard, and which made him blush to the tips of 
his ears, old soldier as he was. 

As he walked up the street, he soliloquised: “A pretty mess 
I’ve made of it — done him all the service I could, and not helped 
her a bit — I see there is no chance of seeing her, though I shall 
try. I will go round Hampstead to-morrow, though that is a poor 
chance. In Paris, now, or Vienna, one could find her directly. 
What a pity we have no police ! ” 


CHAPTEK XV. 

THE BRIGHTON RACES, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEREAT. 

George Hawker just waited till he heard the retiring footsteps 
of the Major, and then, leaving the house, held his way rapidly 
towards Mary’s lodgings, which were in Hampstead ; but finding 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


119 


he would be too late to gain admittance, altered his course when 
he was close to the house, and went to his own house, which was 
not more than a few hundred yards distant. In the morning he 
went to her, and she ran down the garden to meet him before the 
servant had time to open the door, looking so pretty and bright. 
“ Ah, George ! ” said she, “you never came last night, after all 
your promises. I shall be glad when it’s all over, George, and we 
are together for good.” 

“ It won’t he long first, my dear,” he answered ; “we must 
manage to get through that time as well as we can, and then 
we’U begin to sound the old folks. You see I am come to 
breakfast.” 

“ I expected you,” she said ; “ come in and we will have such 
a pleasant chat, and after that you must take me down the town, 
George, and we will see the carriages.” 

“ Now, my love,” said George ; “ I’ve got to tell you something 
that will vex you ; but you must not be down-hearted about it, 
you know. The fact is, that your friends, as they call themselves, 
moving heaven and earth to get you back, by getting me out of 
the way, have hit on the expedient of spreading false reports 
about me, and issuing scandals against me. They found out my 
address at the Nag’s Head, and came there after me not half an 
hour after you were gone, and I only got out of their way by good 
luck. You ought to give me credit for not giving any living soul 
the secret of our whereabouts, so that all I have got to do is to 
keep quiet here until our little business is settled, and then 
I shall be able to face them boldly again, and set everything 
straight.” 

“ How cruel ! ” she said ; “ how unjust ! I will never believe 
anything against you, George.” 

“ I am sure of 'that, my darling ; ” he said, kissing her. “ But 
now, there is another matter I must speak about, though I don’t 
like to, — I am getting short of money, love.” 

“ I have got nearly a hundred pounds, George,” she said ; 
“ and, as I told you, I have five thousand pounds in the funds, 
which I can sell out at any time I like.” 

“We shall do well, then, my Polly. Now let us go for a 
walk.” 

All that week George stayed with her quietly, till the time of 
residence necessary before they could be married was expired. 
He knew that he was treading on a mine, which at any time 
might burst and blow his clumsy schemes to the wind. But 
circumstances were in his favour, and the time came to an end at 
last. He drank hard all the time without letting Mary suspect it, 


120 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


but afterwards, when it was all over, wondered at his nerve and 
self-possession through all those trying days, when he was forced 
eternally to have a smile or a laugh ready, and could not hear a 
step behind him without thinking of an officer, or look over his 
head without thinking he saw a gallows in the air. 

It was during this time that he nursed in his heart a feeling of 
desperate hatred and revenge against William Lee, which almost 
became the leading passion of his life. He saw, or thought he 
saw, that this man was the author of all the troubles that were 
gathering so thick around his head, and vowed, if chance threw 
the man in his way again, that he would take ample and fearful 
vengeance, let it cost what it might. And though this feeling 
may have sometimes grown cold, yet he never (as we shall see), 
to the last day forgot or forgave the injmues this man had done 
him. 

Mary was as innocent of business as a child, and George found 
little difficulty in persuading her, that the best thing she could do 
under present circumstances, was to sell out the money she had 
in the funds, and place it in a bank, to be drawn on as occasion 
should require ; saying that they should be so long perhaps, before 
they had any other fund to depend on, that they might find it 
necessary to undertake some business for a living, in which case, 
it would be as weU to have their money under command at a 
moment’s notice. 

There was, not far from the bank, an old Stock-broker, who 
had known her father and herself for many years, and was well 
acquainted with all their affairs, though they had but little inter- 
course by letter. To him she repaired, and, merely informing 
him that she was going to marry without her father’s consent, 
begged him to manage the business for her ; which he, compli- 
menting her upon her good fortune in choosing a time when the 
funds were so high, immediately undertook ; at the same time 
recommended her to a banker, where she might open an account. 

On the same day that this business was concluded, a licence 
was procured, and their wedding fixed for the next day. “ Now,” 
thought George, as he leapt into bed on that night, “ let only 
to-morrow get over safely, and I can begin to see my way out of 
the wood again.” 

And in the morning they were married in Hampstead church. 
Parson, clerk, pew-opener, and beadle, all remarked what a hand- 
some young couple they were, and how happy they ought to be ; 
and the parson departed, and the beadle shut up the cliurch, and 
the mice came out again, and ate the Bibles, and the happy pair 
walked away domi the road, bound together by a strong chain. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


121 


which nothing could loose hut death. They went to Brighton. 
Mary had said she would so like to see the sea ; and the morning 
after they arrived there — the morning after their wedding — Mary 
wrote an affectionate penitential letter to her father, telling him 
that she was married, and praying his forgiveness. 

They were quite gay at Brighton, and she recovered her spirits 
wonderfully at first. George soon made acquaintances, who soon 
got very familiar, after the manner of their kind, — greasy, tawdry, 
bedizened bucks, — never asleep, always proposing a game of cards, 
always carrying ofi* her husband. Maiy hated them, while she was 
at times proud to see her husband in such fine company. 

Such were the eagles that gathered round the carcass of George 
Hawker; and at last these eagles began to bring the hen-hirds 
with them, who frightened our poor little dove with the amplitude 
and splendour of their feathers, and their harsh, strange notes. 
George knew the character of those women well enough ; hut 
already he cared little enough about his wife, even before they had 
been a month married, going on the principle that the sooner she 
learned to take care of herself, the better for her ; and after they 
had been married little more than a month, Mary thought she 
began to see a change in her husband’s behaviour to her. 

He grew sullen and morose, even to her. Every day ahnost he 
would come to her with a scowl upon his face ; and when she 
asked if he was angry with her, would say, “ No, that he wasn’t 
angry with her ; but that things were going wrong — altogether 
wrong ; and if they didn’t mend, he couldn’t see his way out of it 
at all.” 

But one night he came home cheerful and hilarious, though 
rather the worse for liquor. He showed her a roll of notes which 
he had won at roulette — over a hundred pounds — and added, 
“ That shall be the game for me in future, Polly; all square and 
above board there.” 

“ My dear George, I wish you’d give up gambling.” 

“ So I will, some of these fine days, my dear. I only do it to 
pass the time. It’s cursed dull having nothing to do.” 

“ To-morrow is the great day at the races, George. I wish you 
would take me ; I never saw a horse-race.” 

“ Ay, to be sure,” said he ; “ we’ll go, and, what’s more, we’ll 
go alone. I won’t have you seen in public with those dowdy 
drabs.” 

So they went alone. Such a glorious day as it was — the last 
happy day she spent for very long ! How delightful it was, all 
this msh and crush, and shouting and huhhuh around, while you 
were seated in a phaeton, secure above the turmoil I What delight 


122 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


to see all the beautiful women in the carriages, and, grandest sight 
of all, which struck awe and admiration into Mary’s heart, was the 
great Prince himself, that noble gentleman, in a gutter-sided hat, 
and a wig so fearfully natural that Maiy secretly longed to pull his 
hair. 

But princes and duchesses were alike forgotten when the course 
was cleared for the great event of the day, and, one by one, the 
sleek beauties came floating along, above the crowd, towards the 
starting-post. Then George, leaving Mary in the phaeton to the 
care of their landlady, pushed his way among the crowd, and, by 
dint of hard squeezing, got against the rail. He had never seen 
such horses as these ; he had never known what first-class horse- 
racing was. Here was a new passion for him, which, like all his 
others, should only by its perversion end in his ruin. 

He had got some money on one of the horses, though he, of 
course, had never seen it.. There was a cheer all along the line, 
and a dark bay fled past towards the starting-post, seeming rather 
to belong to the air than the ground. “By George,” he said, 
aloud, as the blood mounted to his face, and tingled in his ears, 
“ I never saw such a sight as that before.” 

He was ashamed of having spoken aloud in his excitement, but 
a groom who stood by said, for his consolation, — 

“ I don’t suppose you ever did, sir, nor no man else. That’s 
young Velocipede, and that’s Chiffney a-ridin’ him. You’ll see 
that horse walk over for everything next year.” 

But now the horses come do^\^l, five of them abreast, at a walk, 
amid a dead silence from the crowd, three of them steady old 
stagers, but two jumping and pulling. “ Back, Velocipede ; back 
Lara ! ” says the starter ; clown goes the flag, they dart away, and 
then there is a low hum of conversation, until a murmur is heard 
down the course, which swells into a roar as you notice it. The 
horses are coming. One of the royal huntsmen gallops by, and 
then, as the noise comes up towards you, you can hear the mad- 
dening rush of the horses’ feet upon the turf, and, at the same 
time, a bay and a chestnut rash past in the last fierce struggle, 
and no man knows yet who has won. 

Then the crowd poured once more over the turf, and surged 
and cheered round the winning horses. Soon it came out that 
Velocipede had won, and George, turning round delighted, stood 
face to face with a gipsy woman. 

She had her hood low on her head, so that he could not see her 
face, but she said, in a low voice, “ Let me tell your fortune.” 

“It is told already, mother,” said George. “Velocipede has 
won ; you won’t tell me any better news than that this day, I know.” 


GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 


123 


“No, George Hawker, I shan’t,” replied the gipsy, and, raising 
her hood for an instant, she discovered to his utter amazement the 
familiar countenance of Madge. 

“ Will you let me tell your fortune now, my hoy ? ” she said. 

^ “What, Madge, old girl! By Jove, you shall. Well, who’d 
a’ thought of seeing you here ? ” 

“ I’ve been following you, and looking for you ever so long,” 
she said. “ They at the Nag’s Head didn’t know where you were 
gone, and if I hadn’t been a gipsy, and o’ good family, I’d never 
have found you.” 

“You’re a good old woman,” he said. “I suppose you’ve 
some news for me ? ” 

“ I have,” she answered ; “ come away after me.” 

He followed her into a booth, and they sat down. She began 
the conversation. 

“ Are you married ? ” she asked. 

“ Ay ; a month since.” 

“ And you’ve got her money ? ” 

“ Yes,” he said ; “ but I’ve been walking into it.” 

“ Make the most of it,” said Madge. “ Your father’s dead,” 

“Dead!” 

“ Ay, dead. And what’s worse, lad, he lived long enough to 
alter his will.” 

“Oh, Lord ! What do you mean ? ” 

“I mean,” she said, “ that he has left all his money to your 
cousin. He found out everything, all in a minute, as it were ; 
and he brought a new will home from Exeter, and I witnessed it. 
And he turned me out of doors, and, next morning, after I was 
gone, he was found dead in his bed. I got to London, and found 
no trace of you there, till, by an accident, I heard that you had 
been seen down here, so I came on. I’ve got my living by casting 
fortins, and begging, and cadging, and such like. Sometimes I’ve 
slept in a barn, and sometimes in a hedge, but I’ve fought my way 
to you, true and faithful, through it all, you see.” 

“So he’s gone,” said George, between his teeth, “and his 
money with him. That’s awful. What an unnatural old viUain ! ” 

“He got it into his head at last, George, that you weren’t his 
son at all.” 

“ The lunatic ! — and what put that into his head ? ” 

“ He knew you weren’t his wife’s son, you see, and he had 
heard some stories about me before I came to live with him, and 
so, at the last, he took to saying he’d nought to do with you.” 

“ Then you mean to say 

'‘That you are my boy,” she said, “my own boy. Wliy, lad. 


124 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 


who but thy o^vn mother would a’ done for thee what I have? 
And thou never thinking of it all these years ! Blind lad ! ” 

“ Good God ! ” said George. “ And if I had only known that 
before, how differently I’d have gone on. How I’d have sneaked 
and truckled, and fetched and carried for him ! Bah, it’s enough 
to drive one mad. All this hide-and-seek work don’t pay, old 
woman. You and I are bowled out with it. How easy for you 
to have given me a hint of this years ago, to make me careful ! 
But you delight in mystery and conglomeration, and you always 
will. There — I ain’t ungrateful, but when I think of what we’ve 
lost, no wonder I get wild. And what the devil am I to do 
now ? ” 

“You’ve got the girl’s money to go on with,” she said. 

“Not so very much of it,” he replied. “I tell you I’ve been 
playing like — never mind what, this last month, and I’ve lost 
every night. Then I’ve got another woman in tow, that costs 
— oh curse her, what don’t she cost, what with money and 
bother ? — In short, if I don’t get something from somewhere, in 
a few months I shall be in Queer Streets. What chance is there 
of the parson’s dying ? ” 

“It don’t matter much to you when he dies, I expect,” said 
she, “ for you may depend that those that’s got hold of him won’t 
let his money come into your hands. He’s altered his will, you 
may depend on it.” 

“ Do you really think so ? ” 

“ I should think it more probable than not. You see that old 
matter with the Bank is kno-wn all over the country, although they 
don’t seem inclined to push it against you, for some reason. Yet 
it’s hardly likely that the Vicar would let his money go to a man 
who couldn’t be seen for fear of a rope.” 

“You’re a raven, old woman,” he said. “What am I to 
do?” 

“ Give up play, to begin with.” 

“ WeU?” 

“ Start some business with what’s left.” 

“ Ha, ha ! WeU, I’ll think of it. You must want some money, 
old girl ! Here’s a fipunnote.” 

“ I don’t want money, my boy ; I’m all right,” she said. 

“ Oh, nonsense ; take it.” 

“ I won’t,” she answered. “ Give me a kiss, George.” 

He kissed her forehead, and bent down his head reflecting. 
When he looked up she was gone. 

He ran out of the booth and looked right and left, but saw her 
nowhere. Then he went sulkily back to his wife. He hardly 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


125 


noticed her, hut said it was time to go home. All the way hack, 
and after they had reached their lodgings, he kept the same 
moody silence, and she, frightened at some unheard-of-calamity, 
forbore to question him. But when she was going to bed she 
could withhold her anxiety no longer, and said to him, — 

“ Oh, George, you have got some bad news ; let me share it 
with you. If it is anything about my father, I implore you to 
tell me. How is it I have got no answer to the letter I wrote a 
month ago ? ” 

He answered her savagely, “ I don’t know anything about your 
father, and I don’t care. I’ve got had news, d — d had news, if 
that will make you sleep the sounder. And, once for all, you’ll 
find it best, when you see me sulky, not to give me any of 
your tantrums in addition. Mind thai” 

He had never spoken to her like that before. She went to her 
bed crushed and miserable, and spent the night in crying, while 
he went forth and spent the night with some of his new companions, 
playing wildly and losing recklessly, till the summer morning sun 
streamed through the shutters, and shone upon him desperate 
and nigh penniless, ripe for a fall lower than any he had had as 
yet. 


CHAPTER XYI. 

THE END OF MAKY’s EXPEDITION. 

Let us hurry over what is to follow. I who knew her so well can 
have no pleasure in dwelling over her misery and degradation. 
And he who reads these pages wiU, I hope, have little sympathy 
with the minor details of the life of such a man as George 
Hawker. 

Some may think that she has been punished enough already, 
for leaving her quiet happy home to go away with such a man. 
“ She must have learnt already,” such would say, “ that he cares 
nothing for her. Let her leave her money behind, and go hack 
to her father to make such amends as she may for the misery she 
has caused him.” Alas, my dear madam, who would rejoice in 
such a termination of her troubles more than myself? But it is not 
for me to mete out degrees of punishment. I am trying with the 
best of my poor abilities to write a true history of certain people 
whom I knew. And I, no more than any other human creature, 


126 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


can see the consequences that will follow on any one act of folly or 
selfishness, such as this poor foolish girl has committed. We 
must wait and watch, judging with aU charity. Let you and me 
go on with her even to the very end. 

Good men draw together very slowly. Yet it is one of the 
greatest happinesses one is capable of, to introduce two such to 
one another, and see how soon they become friends. But bad 
men congregate like crows or jackals, and when a new one 
appears, he' is received into the pack without question, as soon as 
he has given proof sufficient of being a rascal. 

This was the case with George Hawker. His facility for 
making acquaintance with rogues and blacklegs was perfectly 
marvellous. Any gentleman of this class seemed to recognise 
him instinctively, and became familiar immediately. So that soon 
he had round him such a circle of friends as would have gone 
hard to send to the dogs the most honourable and virtuous young 
man in the three kingdoms. 

When a new boy goes to school, his way is smoothed very 
much at first by the cakes and pocket-money he brings with him. 
Till these are gone he must be a weak boy indeed who cannot (at 
a small school) find some one to fight his battles and fetch and 
carry for him. Thackeray has thought of this (what does he not 
think of?) in his little book, “Dr. Birch,” where a young 
sycophant is represented saying to his friend, who has just 
received a hamper, “ Hurrah, old fellow, Vll lend yon my knife.’* 
This was considered so true to nature, on board a ship in which I 
once made a long voyage, that it passed into a proverb with us, 
and if any one was seen indulging in a luxury out of the way at 
dinner, — say an extra bottle of wine out of his private store, — 
half-a-dozen would cry out at once, “ Hurrah, old fellow, ITl lend 
you my knife : ” a modest way of requesting to be asked to take 
a glass of wine better than that supplied by the steward. 

In the same way, George Hawker was treated by the men he 
had got round him as a man who had a little property that he had 
not got rid of, and as one who was to be used with some civility, un til 
his money was gone, and he sank do^\^l to the level of the rest of 
them — to the level of living by his wits, if they were sharp enough 
to make a card or billiard sharper ; or otherwise to find his level 
among the proscribed of society, let that be what it might. 

And George’s wits were not of the first order, or the second ; 
and his manners and education were certainly not those of a 
gentleman, or likely to be useful in attracting such unwary 
persons as these Arabs of the metropolis preyed upon. So it 
happened that when all his money was played away, which came 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


127 


to pass in a month or two, the higher and cleverer class of rascals 
began to look uncommonly cold upon him. 

At first poor crushed Mary used to entertain of an evening 
some of the elite among the card- sharpers of London — men who 
actually could have spoken to a gentleman in a public place, and 
not have got kicked. These men were polite, and rather agree- 
able, and one of them, a Captain Saxon, was so deferential to her, 
and seemed so entirely to understand her position, that she grew 
very fond of him, and was always pleased to see him at her 
house. 

Though, indeed, she saw but little of any men who came there, 
soon after any of them arrived, she used to receive a signal from 
George, which she dared not disobey, to go to bed. And when 
she lay there, lonely and sleepless, she could detect, from the 
absence of conversation, save now and then a low, fierce oath, 
that they were playing desperately, and at such times she would 
lie trembling and crying. Once or twice, during the time she 
remembered these meetings, they were rudely broken upon by 
oaths and blows, and on one particular occasion, she heard one of 
the gamesters, when infuriated, call her husband “ a d — d swindling 
dog of a forger.” 

In these times, which lasted but a few months, she began to 
reflect what a fool she had been, and how to gratify her fancy she 
had thrown from her everything solid and worth keeping in the 
world. She had brought herself to confess, in bitterness and 
anguish, that he did not love her, and never had, and that she was 
a miserable unhappy dupe. But, notwithstanding, she loved him 
still, though she dreaded the sight of him, for she got little from 
him now but oaths and taunts. 

It was soon after their return from Brighton that he broke out, 
first on some trivial occasion, and cursed her aloud. He said he 
hated the sight of her pale face, for it always reminded him of 
ruin and misery ; that he had the greatest satisfaction in telling 
her that he was utterly ruined ; that his father was dead, and had 
left his money elsewhere, and that her father was little better ; 
that she would soon be in the workhouse ; and, in fine, said 
everything that his fierce, wild, brutal temper could suggest. 

She never tempted another outbreak of the kind ; that one was 
too horrible for her, and crushed her spirit at once. She only 
tried by mildness and submission to deprecate his rage. But 
every day he came home looking fiercer and wilder ; as time went 
on her heart sank within her, and she dreaded something more 
fearful than she had experienced yet. 

As I said, after a month or two, his first companions began to 


128 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


drop off, or only came, bullying and swearing, to demand money. 
And now another class of men began to take their place, the sight 
of whom made her blood cold — worse dressed than the others, and 
worse mannered, with strange, foul oaths on their lips. And then, 
after a time, two ruffians, worse looking than any of the others, 
began to come there, of whom the one she dreaded most was 
called Maitland. 

He was always very civil to her; but there was something 
about him, his lowering, evil face, and wild looks, which made 
him a living nightmare to her. She knew he was Hying from 
justice, by the way he came and went, and by the precaution 
always taken when he was there. But when he came to live in 
the room over theirs, and when, by listening at odd times, she 
found that he and her husband were engaged in some great 
villainy, the nature of which she could not understand, then she 
saw that there was nothing to do, but in sheer desperation to sit 
down and wait the catastrophe. 

About this time she made another discovery, that she was 
penniless, and had been so some time. George had given her 
money from time to time to carry on household expenses, and she 
contrived to make these sums answer well enough. But one day, 
determined to know the worst, she asked him, at the risk of another 
explosion, how their account stood at the bank ? He replied, in the 
best of his humours, apparently, “ that the five thousand they had 
had there had been overdrawn some six weeks, and that, if it hadn’t 
been for his exertions in various ways, she’d have been starved 
out before now.” 

“ All gone ! ” she said ; “ and where to ? ” 

“ To the devil,” he answered. “ And you may go after it.” 

“ And what are we to do now, George ? ” 

“ The best we can.” 

“ But the baby, George ? I shall lie-in in three months.” 

“You must take your chance, and the baby too. As long as 
there’s any money going you’ll get some of it. If you wote to 
your father you might get some.” 

“ I’ll never do that,” she said. 

“ Won’t you ? ” said he ; “ I’ll starve you into it when money 
gets scarce.” 

Things remained like this till it came to be nearly ten months 
from their marriage. Mary had never wi'itten home but once, from 
Brighton, and then, as we know, the answer had miscarried ; so 
she, conceiving she was cast off by her father, had never attempted 
to ccmmunicate with him again. The time drew nigh that she 
should be confined, and she got very sick and ill, and still the 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


129 


man Maitland lived in the house, and he and George spent much 
of their time away together at night. 

Yet poor Mary had a friend who stayed by her through it all — 
Captain Saxon, the great billiard sharper. Many a weary hour, 
when she was watching up anxious and ill, for her husband, this 
man would come and sit with her, talking agreeably and well about 
many things ; but chiefly about the life he used to lead before he 
fell so low as he was then. 

He used to say, “Mrs. Hawker, you cannot tell what a relief 
and pleasure it is to me to have a lady to talk to again. You 
must conceive how a man brought up like myself misses it.” 

“Surely, Captain Saxon,” she would say, “you have some 
relations left. Why not go back to them ? ” 

“ They wouldn’t ovui me,” he said. “ I smashed everything, 
a fine fortune amongst other things, by my goings on ; and they 
very properly cast me off. I never got beyond the law, though. 
Many well-known men speak to me now, but they won’t play with 
me, though ; I am too good. And so you see I play dark to win 
from young fellows, and I am mixed up with a lot of scoundrels. 
A man brought an action against me the other day to recover two 
hundred pounds I won of him, but he couldn’t do anything. And 
the judge said, that though the law couldn’t touch me, yet I was 
mixed up notoriously with a gang of sharpers. That was a pleasant 
thing to hear in court, wasn’t it? — but true.” 

“ It has often surprised me to see how temperate you are. Cap- 
tain Saxon,” she said. 

“ I am forced to be,” he said ; “I must keep my hand steady. 
See there ; it’s as firm as a rock. No ; the consolation of drink 
is denied me ; I have something to live for still. I’ll tell you a 
secret. I’ve insured my life very high in favour of my little sister 
whom I ruined, and who is out as a governess. If I don’t pay up 
to the last, you see, or if I commit suicide, she’ll lose the money. 
I pay very high, I assure you. On one occasion not a year ago, 
I played for the money to pay the premium only two nights before 
it would have been too late. There was touch and go for you ! 
But my hand was as steady as a rock, and after the last game was 
over I fainted.” 

“ Good Lord,” she said, “ what a terrible life ! But suppose 
you fall into sickness and poverty. Then you may faU into 
arrear, and she will lose everything after all.” 

He laughed aloud. A strange wild laugh. “ No,” said, he ; 
“I am safe there, if physicians are to be believed. Sometimes, 
when I am falling asleep, my heart begins to flutter and whirl, 
and I sit up in bed, breathless and perspiring till it grows still 

10 


130 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


again. Then I laugh to myself, and say, ‘ Not this time then, 
but it can’t be long now.’ Those palpitations, Mrs. Hawker, are 
growing worse and worse each month. I have got a desperate 
incurable heart complaint, that will carry me off, sudden and 
sure, without warning, I hope to a better sort of world than this.” 

“ I am sorry for you. Captain Saxon,” she said, sobbing, “ so 
very, very sorry for you ! ” 

“ I thank you kindly, my good friend,” he replied. “ It’s long 
since I had so good a friend as you. Now change the subject. I 
want to talk to you about yourself. You are going to be con- 
fined.” 

‘‘In a few days, I fear,” she said. 

“ Have you money ? ” 

“ My husband seems to have money enough at present, but we 
have none to fall back upon.” 

“ What friends have you ? ” 

“ None that I can apply to.” 

“ H’m,” he said. “ Well, you must make use of me, and as 
far as I can manage it, of my purse too, in case of an emergency. 
I mean, you know, Mrs. Hawker,” he added, looking full at her, 
“ to make this offer to you as I would to my own sister. Don’t 
in God’s name refuse my protection, such as it is, from any mis- 
taken motives of jealousy. Now tell me, as honestly as you dare, 
how do you believe your husband gets his living ? ’ ’ 

“ I have not the least idea, but I fear the worst.” 

“ You do right,” he said. “ Forewarned is forearmed, and, at 
the risk of frightening you, I must bid you prepare for the worst. 
Although I know nothing about what he is engaged in, yet I 
know that the man Maitland, who lives above, and who you say is 
your husband’s constant companion, is a desperate man. If any- 
thing happens, apply to me straightway, and I will do all I can. 
My principal hope is in putting you in communication with your 
friends. Could you not trust me with your story, that we might 
take advice together ? ” 

She told him all from beginning to the end, and at the last she 
said, “If the worst should come, whatever that may be, I would 
write for help to Major Buckley, for the sake of the child that is 
to come.” 

“ Major Buckley ! ” — he asked eagerly, — “ do you mean James 
Buckley of the — th ? ” 

“ The same man,” she replied, “ my kindest friend.” 

“Oh, Lord!” he said, growing pale, “I’ve got one of these 
spasms coming on. A glass of water, my dear lady, in God’s 
name 1 ” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


131 


He held both hands on his heart, and lay hack in his chair a 
little, with livid lips, gasping for breath. By degrees his white 
hands dropped upon his lap, and he said with a sigh, “ Nearer 
still, old friend, nearer than ever. Not far off now.” 

But he soon recovered and said, “ Mrs. Hawker, it you ever see 
that man Buckley again, tell him that you saw Charley Biddulph, 
who was once his friend, fallen to be the consort of rogues and 
thieves, cast off by every one, and dying of a heart complaint ; but 
tell him he could not die without sending a tender love to his good 
old comrade, and that he remembered him and loved him to the 
very end.” 

“ And I shall say too,” said Mary, “ when all neglected me, and 
forgot me, this Charles Biddulph helped and cheered me ; and 
when I was fallen to the lowest, that he was still to me a courteous 
gentleman, and a faithful adviser ; and that hut for him and his 
goodness I should have sunk into desperation long ago. Be sure 
that I will say this too.” 

The door opened, and George Hawker came in. 

“ Good evening. Captain Saxon,” said he. “ My wife seems to 
make herself more agreeable to you than she does to me. I hope 
you are pleased with her. However, you are welcome to he. I 
thank God I ain’t jealous. Where’s Maitland ? ” 

“ He has not been here to-night, George,” she said, timidly. 

“ Curse him, then. Give me a candle ; I’m going up-stairs. 
Don’t go on my account. Captain Saxon. Well, if you will, good 
night.” 

Saxon bade him good night, and went. George went up into 
Maitland’s room, where Mary was never admitted ; and soon she 
heard him hammer, hammering at metal, overhead. She was too 
used to that sound to take notice of it ; so she went to bed, hut 
lay long awake, thinking of poor Captain Saxon. 

Less than a week after that she was confined. She had a hoy, 
and that gave her new life. Poorly provided for as that child 
was, he could not have been more tenderly nursed or more prized 
and loved, if he had been horn in the palace, with his Majesty’s 
right honourable ministers in the ante-room, drinking dry Sillery 
in honour of the event. 

Now she could endure what was to come better. And less than 
a month after, just as she was getting well again, all her strength 
and courage were needed. The end came. 

She was sitting before the fire, about ten o’clock at night, nurs- 
ing her baby, when she heard the street-door opened by a key ; 
and the next moment her husband and Maitland were in the room. 

“ Sit quiet, now, or I’ll knock your brains out with the poker,” 


132 


THE EECOLfiECTIONS OF 


said (xeorge ; and, seizing a china ornament from the chimney- 
piece, he thrust it into the fire, and heaped the coals over it. 

“ We’re caught like rats, you fool, if they have tracked us,” 
said Maitland ; ‘‘ and nothing but your consummate folly to thank 
for it. I deserve hanging for mixing myself up with such a man 
in a thing like this. Now, are you coming ; or do you want half- 
an-hour to wish your wife good-bye ? ” 

George never answered that question. There was a noise of 
breaking glass down-stairs, and a moment after a sound of several 
feet on the stair. 

“ Make a fight for it,” said Maitland, “ if you 'can do nothing 
else. Make for the back-door.” 

But George stood aghast, while Mary trembled in every limb. 
The door was burst open, and a tall man coming in said, “ In the 
King’s name, I arrest you, George Hawker and William Maitland, 
for coining.” 

Maitland threw himself upon the man, and they fell crashing 
over the table. George dashed at the door, but was met by two 
others. For a minute there was a wild scene of confusion and 
struggling, while Mary crouched against the wall with the child, 
shut her eyes, and tried to pray. When she looked round again 
she saw her husband and Maitland securely handcuffed, and the 
tall man, who first came in, wiping the blood from a deep cut in 
his forehead, said, 

“ There is nothing against this woman, is there, Sanders ? ” 

“Nothing, sir, except that she is the prisoner Hawker’s wife.” 

“ Poor woman ! ” said the tall man. “ She has been lately 
confined, too. I don’t think it will he necessary to take her into 
custody. Take away the prisoners ; I shall stay here and 
search.” 

He began his search by taking the tongs and pulling the fire to 
pieces. Soon he came to the remnants of the china ornament 
which George had thrown in ; and, after a little more raking, two 
or three round pieces of metal fell out of the grate. 

“Avery green trick,” he remarked. “Well, they must stay 
there to cool before I can touch them ; ” and turning to Mary said, 
“Could you oblige me with some sticking-plaster? Your hus- 
band’s confederate has given me an ugly blow.” 

She got some, and put it on for him. “ Oh, sir! ” she said, 
“ Can you tell me what this is all about ? ” 

“ Easy, ma’am,” said he. “ Maitland is one of the most noto- 
rious coiners in England, and your husband is his confederate and 
assistant. We’ve been watching, just to get a case that there 
would be no trouble about, and we’ve got it.” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


133 


“ And if it is proved ? ” she asked, trembling. 

He looked very serious. “Mrs. Hawker, I know your history, 
as well as your husband’s, the same as if you told it to me. So I 
am sorry to give- a lady who is in misfortune more pain than I can 
help ; hut you know coining is a hanging matter.” 

She rocked herself wildly to and fro, and the chair where she 
sat, squeezing the child against her bosom till he cried. She 
soothed him again without a word, and then said to the officer, who 
was searching every nook and cranny in the room : 

“ Shall you be obliged to turn me out of here, or may I stay a 
few nights ? ” ’ 

“ You can stay as long as you please, madam,” he said ; 
“ that’s a matter with your landlady, not me. But if I was you 
I’d communicate with my friends, and get some money to have my 
husband defended.” 

“ They’d sooner pay for the rope to hang him,” she said. 
“ You seem a kind and pitiful sort of man; tell me honestly, is 
there any chance for him ? ” 

“ Honestly, none. There lay be some chance of his life ; but 
there is evidence enough on this one charge, leave alone others, 
mind you, to convict twenty men. Why, we’ve evidence of two 
forgeries committed on his father before ever he married you ; so 
that, if he is acquitted on this charge, he’U be arrested for another 
outside the court.” 

All night long she sat up nursing the child before the fire, which 
from time to time she replenished. The officers in possession 
slept on sofas, and dozed in chairs ; but when the day broke she 
was still there, pale and thoughtful, sitting much in the same 
place and attitude as she did before all this happened, the night 
before, which seemed to her like a year ago, so great was the 
change since then. “So,” thought she, “he was nothing but a 
villain after all. He had merely gained her heart for money’s 
sake, and cast her off when it was gone. What a miserable fool 
she had been, and how rightly served now, to be left penniless in 
the world ! ” 

Penniless, but not friendless. She remembered Captain Saxon, 
and determined to go to him and ask his advice. So when the 
strange weird morning had crept on, to such time as the accustomed 
crowd began to surge through the street, she put on her bonnet, 
and went away for the first time to seek him at his lodgings, in a 
small street, leading off' Piccadilly. 

An old woman answered the door. “ The Captain was gone,” 
she said, “ to Boulogne, and wouldn’t be back yet for a fortnight. 
Would she leave any name ? ” 


134 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


She hardly thought it worth while. All the world seemed to have 
deserted her now ; but she said, more in absence of mind than for 
any other reason, “Tell him that Mrs. Hawker called, if you 
please.” 

“ Mr. Hawker ! ” the old woman said ; “ there’s a letter for you, 
ma’am, I believe ; and something particular too, ’cause he told me 
to keep it in my desk till you called. Just step in, if you please.” 

Mary followed her in, and she produced a letter directed to Mrs. 
Hawker. When Mary opened it, which she did in the street, after 
the door was shut, the first thing she saw was a bank-note for five 
pounds, and behind it was the following note : — 


“I am forced to go to Boulogne, at a moment’s notice, with a 
man whom I must not lose sight of. Should you have occasion to 
apply to me during my absence (which is fearfully probable), I 
have left this, begging your acceptance of it, in the same spirit as 
that in which it was oflered ; and I pray you to accept this piece of 
advice at the same time : — 

“ Apply instantly to your friends, and go back to them at once. 
Don’t stop about London on any excuse. You have never known 
what it is to be without money yet ; take care you never do. When 
a man or a woman is poor and hungry, there is a troop^of devils 
who always follow such, whispering aU sorts of things to them. 
They are all, or nearly all, known to me : take care you do not 
make their acquaintance. 

“ Yours most affectionately, 

“ Chakles Biddulph.” 


Wliat a strange letter, she thought. He must be mad. Yet 
there was method in his madness, too. Devils such as he spoke 
of had leant over her chair and whispered to her before now, plain 
to be heard. But that was in the old times, when she sat brood- 
ing alone over the fire at night. She was no longer alone now, 
and they had fled — fled, scared at the face of a baby. 

She went home and spoke to the landlady. But little was owing, 
and that she had money enough to pay without the five pounds that 
the kind gambler had given her. However, when she asked the 
landlady whether she could stay there a week or two longer, the 
woman prayed her with tears to begone ; that she and her husband 
had brought trouble enough on them already. 

But there was still a week left of their old tenancy, so she held 
possession in spite of the landlady ; and from the police-officers, 
who were still about the place, she heard that the two prisoners 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


135 


had been committed for trial, and that that trial would take place 
early in the week at the Old Bailey. 

Three days before the trial she had to leave the lodgings, with 
but little more than two pounds in the world. For those three days 
she got lodging as she could in coffee-houses and such places, 
always meeting, however, with that sort of kindness and sympathy 
from the women belonging to them which could not be bought for 
money. She was in such a dull state of despair, that she was 
happily insensible to all smaller discomforts, and on the day of the 
trial she endeavoured to push into the court with her child in her 
arms. 

The crowd was too dense, and the heat was too great for her, 
so she came outside and sat on some steps on one side of a 
passage. Once she had to move as a great personage came up, 
and then one of the officers said — 

“ Come, my good woman, you mustn’t sit there, you know. 
That’s the judge’s private door.” 

“ I beg pardon,” she said, “ and I will move, if you wish me. 
But they are trying my husband for coining, and the court is too 
hot for the child. If you will let me sit there, I will be sure to 
get out of the way when my lord comes past.” 

The man looked at her as if it was a case somewhat out of his 
experience, and went away. Soon, however, he came back again, 
and after staring at her a short time, said — 

“ Do you want anything, missis ? Anything I can get ? ” 

“I am much obliged to you, nothing,” she said; “but if you 
can teU me how the trial is going on, I shall be obliged to you.” 

He shook his head and went away, and when he returned, 
telling her that the judge was summing up, he bade her follow 
him, and found her a place in a quiet part of the court. She 
could see her husband and Maitland standing in the dock, quite 
close to her, and before them the judge was calmly, slowly, and 
distinctly giving the jury the history of the case from beginning 
to end. She was too much bewildered and desperate to listen to 
it, but she was attracted by the buzz of conversation which arose 
when the jury retired. They seemed gone a bare minute to her, 
when she heard and understood that the prisoners were found 
guilty. Then she heard Maitland sentenced to death, and George 
Hawker condemned to be transported beyond the seas for the 
term of his natural life, in consideration of his youth ; so she 
brought herself to understand that the game was played out, and 
turned to go. 

The officer who had been kind to her stopped her, and asked 
her “where she was going? ” She answered, “ To Devonshire,” 


136 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


and passed on, but almost immediately pushed back to him through 
the crowd, which was pouring out of the doors, and thanked him 
for his kindness to her. Then she went out with the crowd into 
the street, and almost instinctively struck westward. 

Through the western streets, roaring with carriages, crowded 
with foot passengers, like one in a dream ; past the theatres, and 
the arches, and all the great, rich world, busy seeking its after- 
noon pleasure : through the long suburbs, getting more scattered 
as she went on, and so out on to the dusty broad western high- 
way : a lonely wanderer, with only one thought in her throbbing 
head, to reach such home as was left her before she died. 

At the first quiet spot she came to she sat down and forced 
herself to think. Two hundred miles to go, and fifteen shillings 
to keep her. Never mind, she could beg ; she had heard that 
some made a trade of begging, and did well ; hard if she should 
die on the road. So she pushed on through the evening toward 
the sinking sun, till the milestones passed slower and slower, and 
then she found shelter in a tramps’ lodging-house, and got what 
rest she could. In a week she was at Taunton. Then the 
weather, which had hitherto been fair and pleasant, broke up, 
and still she held on (with the rain beating from the westward in 
her face, as though to stay her from her refuge), dizzy and con- 
fused, but determined still, along the miry high-road. 

She had learnt from a gipsy woman, with whom she had walked 
in company for some hours, how to carry her child across her 
back, slung in her shawl. So, with her breast bare to the storm, 
she fought her way over the high bleak downs, glad and happy 
when the boy ceased his wailing, and lay warm and sheltered 
behind her, swathed in every poor rag she could spare from her 
numbed and dripping body. 

Late on a wild rainy night she reached Exeter, utterly penni- 
less, and wet to the skin. She had had nothing to eat since noon, 
and her breast was failing for want of nourishment and over- 
exertion. Still it was only twenty miles further. Surely, she 
thought, God had not saved her through two hundred such miles, 
to perish at last. The child was dry and warm, and fast asleep, 
and if she could get some rest in one of the doorways in the lower 
part of the town, till she was stronger, she could fight her way on 
to Drumston ; so she held on to St. Thomas’s, and finding an archway 
drier than the others, sat dovm, and took the child upon her lap. 

Best ! — rest was a fiction ; she was better walking — such aches, 
and cramps, and pains in every joint! She would get up and 
push on, and yet minute after minute went by, and she could 
not summon courage. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


137 


She was sitting with her beautiful face in the light of a lamp. 
A woman well and handsomely dressed was passing rapidly through 
the rain, but on seeing her stopped and said — 

“ My poor girl, why do you sit there in the damp entry such a 
night as this ? ” 

“ I am cold, hungry, ruined ; that’s why I sit under the arch,” 
replied Mary, rising up. 

“ Come home with me,” said the woman : “I will take care of 
you.” 

“ I am going to my friends,” replied she. 

“ Are you sure they will he glad to see you, my dear? ” said 
the woman, “ with that pretty little pledge at your bosom ? ” 

“ I care not,” said Mary. “ I told you I was desperate.” 

“Desperate, my pretty love,” said the woman; “a girl with 
beauty like yours should never be desperate ; come with me.” 

Mary stepped forward and struck her, so full and true that the 
woman reeled backwards, and stood whimpering and astonished. 

“ Out 1 you false jade,” said Mary ; “ you are one of those devils 
that Saxon told me of, who come whispering, and peering, and 
crowding behind those who are penniless and deserted ; but I have 
faced you, and struck you, and I tell you to go back to your master 
and say that I am not for him.” 

The woman went crying and frightened down the street, think- 
ing that she had been plying her infamous trade on a lunatic ; but 
Mary sat down again and nursed the child. 

But the wind changed a little, and the rain began to beat in on 
her shelter ; she arose, and went down the street to seek a new 
one. 

She found a deep arch, well sheltered, and, what was better, a 
lamp inside, so that she could sit on the stone step, and see her 
baby’s face. Dainty quarters, truly ! She went to take possession, 
and started back with a scream. 

What delusion was this ? There, under the lamp, on the step, 
sat a woman, her own image, nursing a baby so like her own that 
she looked down at her bosom to see if it was safe. It must be a 
fancy of her o^vn disordered brain ; but no — for when she gathered 
up her courage, and walked towards it, a woman she knew well 
started up, and, laughing wildly, cried out, 

“Ha! ha! Mary Thornton.” 

“ Ellen Lee ? ” said Mary, aghast. 

“That’s me, dear,” replied the other; “you’re welcome, my 
love, welcome to the cold stones, and wet streets, and to hunger 
and drunkenness, and evil words, and the abomination of desola- 
tion. That’s what we all come to, my dear. Is that his child ? ” 


138 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


Whose ? ” said Mary. “ This is George Hawker’s child.” 

“ Hush, my dear ! ” said the other ; “we never mention his 
name in our society, you know. This is his too — a far finer one 
than yours. Cis Jewell had one of his too, a poor little rat of a 
thing that died, and now the minx is flaunting about the High- 
street every night, in her silks and her feathers as bold as brass. 
I hope you’ll have nothing to say to her ; you and I will keep 
house together. They are looking after me to put me in the 
madhouse. You’ll come too, of course.” 

“ God have mercy on you, poor Nelly ! ” said Mary. 

“Exactly so, my dear,” the poor lunatic replied. “ Of course 
He will. But about him you know. You heard the terms of his 
bargain ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked Mary. 

“ Why, about him you know, G H , Madge the witch’s 

son. He sold himself to the deuce, my dear, on condition of 
ruining a poor girl every year. And he has kept his contract 

hitherto. If he don’t, you know come here, I want to whisper 

to you.” 

The poor girl whispered rapidly in her ear ; but Mary broke 
away from her and fled rapidly do^vn the street, poor Ellen shout- 
ing after her, “ Ha, ha ! the parson’s daughter, too — ha, ha ! ” 

“ Let me get out of this town, 0 Lord ! ” she prayed most 
earnestly, “ if I die in the fields.” And so she sped on, and 
paused not till she was full two miles out of the town towards 
home, leaning on the parapet of the noble bridge that even then 
crossed the river Exe. 

The night had cleared up, and a soft and gentle westerly breeze 
was ruffling the broad waters of the river, where they slept deep, 
dark, and full above the weir. Just below where they broke over 
the low rocky barrier, the rising moon showed a hundred silver 
spangles among the broken eddies. 

The cool breeze and the calm scene quieted and soothed her, 
and, for the first time for many days, she began to think. 

She was going back, but to what ? To a desolated home, to a 
heart-broken father, to the jeers and taunts of her neighbours. 
The wife of a convicted felon, what hope was left for her in this 
world ? None. And that child that was sleeping so quietly on 
her bosom, what a mark was set on him from this time forward ! — 
the son of Hawker the coiner ! Would it not be better if they 
both were lying below there in the cold still water, at rest ? 

But she laughed aloud. “ This is the last of the devils he talked 
of,” said she. “ I have fought the others and beat them. I won’t 
yield to this one.” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


139 


She paused abashed, for a man on horseback was standing 
before her as she turned. Had she not been so deeply engaged 
in her own thoughts she might have heard him merrily whistling 
as he approached from the town, but she heard him not, and was 
first aware of his presence when he stood silently regarding her, 
not two yards off. 

“ My girl,” he said, “ I fear you’re in a bad way. I don’t like 
to see a young woman, pretty as I can see you are even now, 
standing on a bridge, with a baby, talking to herself.” 

“ You mistake me,” she said, “ I was not going to do that ; I 
was resting and thinking.” 

“ Where are you going ? ” he asked. 

“ To Crediton,” she replied. “ Once there, I should almost fancy 
myself safe.” 

“See here,” he said; “my waggon is coming up behind. I 
can give you a lift as far as there. Are you hungry ? ” 

“ Ah,” she said, “ if you knew. If you only knew ! ” 

They waited for the waggon’s coming up, for they could hear 
the horses’ bells chiming cheerily across the valley. “I had an- 
pnly daughter went away once,” he said. “But, glory to God! 
I got her back again, though she brought a child with her. And 
I’ve grown to be fonder of that poor little base-born one than 
anything in this world. So cheer up.” 

“ I am married,” she said ; “ this is my lawful boy, though it 
were better, perhaps, he had never been bom.” 

“ Don’t say that, my girl,” said the old farmer, for such she 
took him to be, “ but thank God you haven’t been deceived like 
so many are.” 

The waggon came up and w^as stopped. He made her take 
such refreshment as was to be got, and then get in and lie quiet 
among the straw till in the grey morning they reached Crediton. 
The weather had gro'wn bad again, .and long before sunrise, after 
thanking and blessing her benefactor, poor Mary struck ofi* once 
more, with what strength she had left, along the deep red lanes, 
through the driving rain. 


CHAPTER XVH. 

EXODUS. 

But let us turn and see what has been going forward in the old 
parsonage this long weary year. Not much that is noteworthy, I 


140 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


fear. The chronicle of a year’s sickness and unhappiness, would 
he rather uninteresting, so I must get on as quick as I can. 

The Vicar only slowly revived from the fit in which he fell on 
the morning of Mary’s departure to find himself hopelessly 
paralytic, unable to walk without support, and barely able to 
articulate distinctly. It was when he was in this state, being led 
up and down the garden by the Doctor and Frank Maberly, the 
former of whom was trying to attract his attention to some of their 
old favourites, the flowers, that Miss Thornton came to him with 
the letter which Mary had written from Brighton, immediately 
after their marriage. 

It was, on the whole, a great relief for the Vicar. He had 
dreaded to hear worse than this. They had kept from him all 
knowledge of Hawker’s forgery on his father, which had been 
communicated to them by Major Buckley. So that he began to 
prepare his mind for the reception of George Hawker as a son-in- 
law, and to force himself to like him. So with shaking palsied 
hand he m*ote : — 

“ Dear Girl, — In sickness or sorrow, remember that I am still 
your father. I hope you will not stop long in London, but come 
back and stay near me. We must forget all that has passed, and 
make the best of it. — John Thornton.” 

Miss Thornton wi'ote : — 

“ My dearest foolish Mary, — How could you leave us like that, 
my love ! Oh, if you had only let us know what was going on, I 
could have told you such things, my dear. But now you will 
never know them, I hope. I hope Mr. Hawker wiU use you 
kindly. Your father hopes that you and he may come down and 
live near him, but we know that is impossible. If your father 
were to know of your husband’s fearful delinquencies, it would kill 
him at once. But when trouble comes on you, my love, as it 
must in the end, remember that there is still a happy home left 
you here.” * 

These letters she never received. George burnt them without 
giving them to her, so that for a year she remained under the im- 
pression that they had cast her off. So only at the last did she, 
as the sole hope of warding off' poverty and misery from her child, 
determine to cast herself upon their mercy. 

The year had nearly passed, when the Vicar had another stroke, 
a stroke that rendered him childish and helpless, and precluded 
all possibility of his leaving his bed again. Miss Thornton found 
that it was necessary to have a man servant in the house now, to 
move him, and so on. So one evening, when Major and Mrs. 
Buckley and the Doctor had come down to sit with her, she 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


141 


asked, “ did they know a man who could undertake the 
business ? ” 

“ Ido,” said the Doctor. “ I know a man who would suit you 
exactly. A strong knave enough. An old soldier.” 

“ I don’t think we should like a soldier in the house. Doctor,” 
said Miss Thornton. ‘‘ They use such very odd language some- 
times, ;/ou know.” 

“ This man never swears,” said the Doctor. 

“ But soldiers are apt to drink sometimes, you know. Doctor,” 
said Miss Thornton. “And that wouldn’t do in this case.” 

“ I’ve kno^vn the man aU my life,” said .the Doctor with anima- 
tion. “ And I never saw him drunk.” 

“He seems faultless. Doctor,” said the Major, smiling. 

“ No, he is not faultless, hut he has his qualifications for the 
office, nevertheless. He can read passably, and might amuse our 
poor old friend in that way. He is not evil tempered, though 
hasty, and I think he would he tender and kindly to the old man. 
He had a father once himself, this man, and he nursed him to his 
latest day, as well as he was able, after his mother had left them 
and gone on the road to destruction. And my man has picked up 
some knowledge of medicme too, and might he a useful ally to the 
physician.” 

“A paragon! ” said Mrs. Buckley, laughing. “Now let us 
hear his faults, dear Doctor.” 

“ They are many,” he replied, “ I don’t deny. But not such 
as to make him an ineligible person in this matter. To begin 
with, he is a fool — a dreaming fool, who once mixed himself up 
with politics, and went on the assumption that truth would prevail 
against humbug. And when he found his mistake, this fellow, 
instead of staying at his post, as a man should, he got disgusted, 
and beat a cowardly retreat, leaving his duty unfulfilled. When 
I look at one side of this man’s life, I wonder why such useless 
fellows as he were born into the world. But I opine that every 
man is of some use, and that my friend may still have manhood 
enough left in him to move an old paralytic man in his bed.” 

“And his name, Doctor? You must tell us that,” said Mrs. 
Buckley, looking sadly at him. 

“lam that man,” said the Doctor, rising. “Dear Miss 
Thornton, you will allow me to come down and stay with you. I 
shall be so glad to be of any use to my old friend, and I am so 
utterly useless now.” 

What could she say, but “yes,” with a thousand thanks, far 
more than she could express ? So he took up his quarters at the 
Vicarage and helped her in the labour of love. 


142 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


The Sunday morning after he came to stay there, he was going 
down stairs, shortly after daybreak, to take a walk in the fresh 
morning air, when on the staircase he met Miss Thornton, and she, 
putting sixpence into his hand, said, 

“ My dear Doctor, I looked out of window just now, and saw a 
tramper woman sitting on the door-step. She has black hair and 
a baby, like a gipsy. And I am so nervous about gipsies, you 
Imow. Would you give her that and tell her to go away ? ” 

The Doctor stepped down with the sixpence in his hand to do as 
he was bid. Miss Thornton followed him. He opened the front 
door, and there sure enough sat a woman, her hair, wet with the 
last night’s rain, knotted loosely up behind her hatless head. She 
sat upon the door- step rocking herself to and fro, partly it would 
seem from disquietude, and partly to soothe the baby which was 
lying on her lap crying. Her back was towards him, and the 
Doctor only had time to notice that she was young, when he 
began, — 

“ My good soul, you mustn’t sit there, you know. It’s Sunday 
morning, and ” 

No more. He had time to say no more. Mary rose from the 
step and looked at him. 

“You are right, sir, I have no business here. But if you wiU 
tell him that I only came back for the child’s sake, he will hear me. 
I couldn’t leave it in the workhouse, you know.” 

Miss Thornton ran forward, laughing wildly, and hugged her to 
her honest heart. “ My darling ! ” she said, “ My own darling ! 
I knew she would find her home at last. In trouble and in 
sorrow I told her where she was to come. Oh happy trouble, that 
has brought our darling back to us ! ” 

“ Aunt ! aunt ! ” said Mary, “ don’t kill me. Scold me a little, 
aunt dear, only a little.” 

“ Scold you, my darling ! Never, never ! Scold you on this 
happy Sabbath morn ! Oh ! never, my love.” 

And the foolishness of these two women was so great that the 
Doctor had to go for a walk. Eight down the garden, round the 
cow-yard, and in by the back way to the kitchen, where he met 
Frank, and told him what had happened. And there they were at 
it again. Miss Thornton kneeling, wiping poor Mary’s blistered 
feet before the fire ; while the maid, foolishly giggling, had got 
possession of the baby, and was talking more affectionate nonsense 
to it than ever baby heard in this world before. 

Mary held out her hand to him, and when he gave her his vast 
bro\vn paw, what does she do, but put it to her lips and kiss it ? — 
as if there was not enough without that. And, to make matters 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


143 


worse, she quoted Scripture, and said, “Forasmuch as ye have 
done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me.” So our 
good Doctor had nothing left hut to break through that cloak of 
cynicism which he delighted to wear (Lord knows why), and to 
kiss her on the cheek, and to teU how happy she had made them 
hy coming back, let circumstances be what they might. 

Then she told them, with hursts of wild weeping, what those 
circumstances were. And at last, when they were all quieted. 
Miss Thornton boldly volunteered to go up and tell the Vicar that 
his darling was returned. 

So she went up, and Mary and the Doctor waited at the bed- 
room door and listened. The poor old man was far gone beyond 
feeling joy or grief to any great extent. When Miss Thornton 
raised him in his bed, and told him that he must brace up his 
nerves to hear some good news, he smiled a weary smile, and 
Mary looking in saw that he was so altered that she hardly knew 
him. 

“ I know,” he said, lisping and hesitating painfully, “ what you 
are going to tell me, sister. She is come home. I knew she 
would come at last. Please tell her to come to me at once ; hut 
I can’t see Am yet. I must get stronger first.” So Mary went 
in to him, and Miss Thornton came out and closed the door. And 
when Mary came down stairs soon afterwards she could not talk to 
them, hut remained a long time silent, crying bitterly. 

The good news soon got up to Major Buckley’s, and so after 
church they saw him striding up the path, leading the pony 
carrying his wife and baby. And while they were still busy 
welcoming her hack, canm a ring at the door, and a loud voice, 
asking if the owner of it might come in. 

Who but Tom Trouhridge ! Who else was there to raise her 
four good feet ofi' the ground, and kiss her on both cheeks, and 
call her his darling little sister ! Who else was there who could 
have changed their tears into laughter so quick that their merri- 
ment was wafted up to the Vicar’s room, and made him ring his 
bell, and tell them to send Tom up to him ! And who but Tom 
could have lit the old man’s face up with a smile, with the history 
of a new colt, that my lord’s mare Thetis had dropped last week ! 

That was her welcome home. To the home she had dreaded 
coming to, expecting to be received with scorn and reproaches, the 
home she had meant to come to only as a penitent, to leave her 
child there and go forth into the world to die. And here she found 
herself the honoured guest — treated as one who had been away on 
a journey, whom they had been waiting and praying for all the 
time, and who came hack to them sooner than expected. None 


144 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


hold the force of domestic affection so cheap as those who violate 
it most rudely. How many proud unhappy souls are there at this 
moment, voluntarily absenting themselves from all that love them 
in the world, because they dread sneers and cold looks at home ! 
And how many of these, going back, would find only tears of joy to 
welcome them, and hear that ever since their absence they had 
been spoken of with kindness and tenderness, and loved, perhaps, 
above all the others ! 

After dinner, when the women were alone together, Mrs. 
Buckley began, — 

“ Now, my dear Mary, you must hear all the news. My 
husband has had a letter from Stockbridge.” 

“ Ah, dear old Jim ! ” said Mary ; “ and how is he ? ” 

“ He and Hamlyn are quite well,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ and 
settled. He has written such an account of that country to Major 
Buckley, that he, half persuaded before, is now wholly determined 
to go there himself.” 

“I heard of this before,” said Mary. “Am I to lose you, 
then, at once ? ” 

“ We shall see,” said Mrs. Buckley ; “ I have my ideas. Now, 
who do you think is going beside ? ” 

“ Half Devonshire, I should think,” said Mary ; “at least, all 
whom I care about.” 

“ It would seem so, indeed, my poor girl,” said Mrs. Buckley ; 
“ for your cousin Troubridge has made up his mind to come.” 

“ There was a time when I could have stopped him,” she 
thought; “but that is gone by now.” And she answered Mrs. 
Buckley : — 

“Aunt and I will stay here, and think of you all. Shall we 
ever hear from you ? It is the other side of the world, is it 
not?” 

“ It is a long way ; but we must wait, and see how things turn 
out. We may not have to separate after all. See, my dear ; are 
you fuUy aware of your father’s state ? I fear you have only come 
home to see the last of him. He probably will be gone before this 
month is out. You see the state he is in. And when he is gone, 
have you reflected what to do ? ” 

Mary, weeping bitterly, said, “No; only that she could never 
live in Drumston, or anywhere where she was known.” 

“ That is wise, my love,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ under the cir- 
cumstances. Have you made up your mind where to go. Miss 
Thornton, when you have to leave the Vicarage for a new in- 
cumbent?” 

“ I have made up my mind,” answered Miss Thornton, “to go 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


145 


wherever Mary goes, if it be to the other end of the earth. We 
will he Ruth and Naomi, my dear. You would never get on 
without me.” 

“ That is what I say,” said Mrs. Buckley. “ Never leave her. 
Why not come away out of all unhappy associations, and from the 
scorn and pity of your neighbours, to live safe and happy with all 
the best friends you have in the world ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” said Mary. “ Ah, if we could only 
do so ! ” 

“ Come away with us,” said Mrs. Buckley, with animation ; 
“ come away with us, and begin a new life. There is Troubridge 
looking high and low for a partner with five thousand pounds. 
Why should not Miss Thornton and yourself be his partners ? ” 

“ Ah me ! ” said Miss Thornton. “ And think of the voyage ! 
But I shall not decide on anything ; Mary shall decide.” 

*#***# 

Scarcely more than a week elapsed from the day that Mary 
came home, when there came a third messenger for old John 
Thornton, and one so peremptory that he arose and followed it in 
the dead of night. So, when they came to his bedside in the 
morning, they found his body there, laid as it was when he 
wished them good night, but cold and dead. He himself was 
gone, and nothing remained but to bury his body decently beside 
his wife’s, in the old churchyard, and to shed some tears, at the 
thought that never, by the fireside, or in the solemn old church, 
they should hear that kindly voice again. 

And then came the disturbance of household goods, and the 
rupture of life-old associations. And although they were begged 
by the new comer not to hurry or incommode themselves, yet they 
too wished to be gone from the house whence everything they 
loved had departed. 

Their kind true friend Frank was presented with the living, and 
they accepted Mrs. Buckley’s invitation to stay at their house till 
they should have decided what to do. It was two months yet 
before the Major intended to sail, and long before those two 
months were past, Mary and Miss Thornton had determined that 
they would not rend asunder the last ties they had this side of the 
grave, but would cast in their lot with the others, and cross the 
weary sea with them towards a more hopeful land. 

One more scene, and we have done with the Old World for 
many a year. Some of these our friends will never see it more, 
and those who do will come back with new thoughts and associa- 
tions, as strangers to a strange land. Only those who have done 
so know how much effort it takes to sav, “ I will go away to a land 

11 


146 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


where none know me or care for me, and leave for ever all that I 
know and love.” And few know the feeling which comes upon 
all men after it is done, — the feeling of isolation, almost of 
terror, at having gone so far out of the hounds of ordinary life ; 
the feeling of self-distrust and cowardice at being alone and 
friendless in the world, like a child in the dark. 

***#*# 

A golden summer’s evening is fading into a soft cloudless 
summer’s night, and Doctor Mulhaus stands upon Mount Edge- 
combe, looking across the trees, across the glassy harbour, over 
the tall men-of-war, out beyond the silver line of surf on the 
breakwater, to where a tall ship is rapidly spreading her white 
wings, and speeding away each moment more rapidly before a fair 
wind, towards the south-west. He watches it growing more dim, 
minute by minute, in distance and in darkness, till he can see no 
longer ; then brushing a tear from his eye he says aloud : — 

“ There goes my English microcosm. All my new English 
friends with whom I was going to pass the rest of my life, peaceful 
and contented, as a village surgeon. Pretty dream, two years 
long ! Truly man hath no sure abiding place here. I will go 
back to Prussia, and see if they are all dead, or only sleeping.” 

So he turned down the steep path under the darkening trees, 
towards where he could see the town lights along the quays, 
among the crowded masts. 


CHAPTER XVHI. 

THE FIRST PUFF OF THE SOUTH WIND. 

A NEW heaven and a new earth ! Tier beyond tier, height above 
height, the great wooded ranges go rolling away westward, till on 
the lofty sky-line they are crowned with a gleam of everlasting 
snow. To the eastward they sink dovn, breaking into isolated 
forest- fringed peaks, and rock- crowned eminences, till with rapidly 
straightening lines they fade into the broad grey plains, beyond 
which the Southern Ocean is visible by the white sea-haze upon 
the sky. 

All creation is new and strange. The trees, surpassing in size 
the largest English oaks, are of a species we have nevur seen 
before. The graceful shrubs, the bright-coloured flowers, ay, the 
very grass- itself, are of species unknown in Europe ; while flaming 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


147 


lories and brilliant parroquets fly whistling, not unmusically, 
through the gloomy forest, and over head in the higher fields of 
air, still lit up hy the last rays of the sun, countless cockatoos 
wheel and scream in noisy joy, as we may see the gulls do about 
an English headland. 

To the northward a great glen, sinking suddenly from the saddle 
on which we stand, stretches away in long vista, until it joins a 
broader valley, through which we can dimly see a full-fed river 
winding along in gleaming reaches, through level meadow land, 
interspersed with clumps of timber. 

We are in Australia. Three hundred and fifty miles south of 
Sydney, on the great watershed which divides the Belloury from 
the Maryhumong, since better known as the Snowy-river of Gipps- 
land. 

As the sun was going down on the scene I have been describing, 
James Stockbridge and I, Geoflry Hamlyn, reined up our horses 
on the ridge above-mentioned, and gazed down the long gully 
which lay stretched at our feet. Only the tallest trees stood with 
their higher boughs glowing with the gold of the departing day, 
and we stood undetermined which route to pursue, and half in- 
clined to camp at the next waterhole we should see. We had 
lost some cattle, and among others a valuable imported bull, which 
we were very anxious to recover. For five days we had been 
passing on from run to run, making inquiries without success, and 
were now fifty long miles from home in a southerly direction. We 
were beyond the bounds of all settlement ; the last station we had 
been at was twenty miles to the north of us, and the occupiers of 
it, as they had told us the night before, had only taken up their 
country about ten weeks, and were as yet the furthest pioneers to 
the southward. 

At this time Stockbridge and I had been settled in our new home 
about two years, and were beginning to get comfortable and con- 
tented. We had had but little trouble with the blacks, and having 
taken possession of a fine piece of country, were flourishing and 
well to do. 

We had never heard from home but once, and that was from 
Tom Troubridge, soon after our departure, telling us that if we 
succeeded he should follow, for that the old place seemed changed 
now we were gone. We had neither of us left any near relations 
behind us, and already we began to think that we were cut off for 
ever from old acquaintances and associations, and were beginning 
to be resigned to it. 

Let us return to where " he and I were standing alone in the 
forest. I dismounted to set right some strap or another, and, 


148 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


instead of getting on my horse again at once, stood leaning against 
him, looking at the prospect, glad to ease my legs for a time, for 
they were cramped with many hours’ riding. 

Stockbridge sat in his saddle immoveable aiid silent as a statue, 
and when I looked in his face I saw that his heart had travelled 
further than his eye could reach, and that he was looking far 
beyond the horizon that bounded his earthly vision, away to the 
pleasant old home which was home to us no longer. 

“ Jim,” said I, “ I wonder what is going on at Drumston now ? ” 

“ I wonder,” he said softly. 

A pause. 

Below us, in the valley, a mob of jackasses were shouting and 
laughing uproariously, and a magpie was chanting his noble vesper 
hymn from a lofty tree. 

“ Jim,” I began again, “ do you ever think of poor little Mary 
now?” 

“ Yes, old boy, I do,” he replied ; “I can’t help it ; I was 
thinking of her then — I am always thinking of her, and, what’s 
more, I always shall be. Don’t think me a fool, old friend, but 
I love that girl as well now as ever I did. I wonder if she has 
married that fellow Hawker ? ” 

“ I fear there is but little doubt of it,” I said ; “try to forget 
her, James. Get in a rage with her, and be proud about it ; 
you’ll make all your life unhappy if you don’t.” 

He laughed. “ That’s all very well, Jeff, but it’s easier said 
than done. — Do you hear that ? There are cattle down the gully.” 

There was some noise in the air, beside the evening rustle of 
the south wind among the tree-tops. Now it sounded like a far- 
off hubbub of waters, now swelled up harmonious, like the booming 
of cathedral bells across some rich old English valley on a still 
summer’s afternoon. 

“ There are cattle down there, certainly,” I said, “ and a very 
large number of them ; they are not ours, depend upon it : there 
are men with them, too, or they would not make so much noise. 
Can it be the blacks driving them off from the strangers we stayed 
with last night, do you think ? If so, we had best look out for 
ourselves.” 

“ Blacks could hardly manage such a large mob as there are 
there,” said James. “I’ll tell you what I think it is, old Jeff; 
it’s some new chums going to cross the watershed, and look for 
new country to the south. If so, let us go down and meet them : 
they will camp down by the river yonder.” 

James was right. All doubt about what the new comers were, 
^ Pacelo Gigantea, 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


149 


solved before we reached the river, for we could hear the 
rapid detonation of the stock-whips loud above the lowing of the 
cattle ; so we sat and watched them debouche from the forest into 
the broad river meadows in the gathering gloom : saw the scene 
so venerable and ancient, so seldom seen in the Old World — the 
patriarchs moving into the desert with all their wealth, to find a 
new pasture -ground. A simple primitive action, the first and 
simplest act of colonisation, yet producing such great results on 
the history of the world, as did the parting of Lot and Abraham 
in times gone by. 

First came the cattle lowing loudly, some trying to stop and 
graze on the rich pasture after their long day’s travel, some head- 
ing noisily towards the river, now beginning to steam with the 
rising evening mist. Now a lordly bull, followed closely by two 
favourite heifers, tries to take matters into his own hands, and 
cut out a route for himself, but is soon driven ignominiously back 
in a lumbering gallop by a quick-eyed stockman. Now a silly 
calf takes it into his head to go for a small excursion up the 
range, followed, of course, by his doting mother, and has to be 
headed in again, not without muttered wrath and lowerings of the 
head from madame. Behind the cattle come horsemen, some six 
or seven in number, and last, four drays, bearing the household 
goods, come crawling up the pass. 

We had time to notice that there were women on the foremost 
dray, when it became evident that the party intended camping in a 
turn of the river just below. One man kicked his feet out of the 
stirrups, and sitting loosely in his saddle, prepared to watch the 
cattle for the first few hours till he was relieved. Another lit a 
fire against a fallen tree, and while the bullock-drivers were busy 
unyoking their beasts, and the women were clambering from the 
dray, two of the horsemen separated from the others, and came 
forward to meet us. 

Both of them I saw were men of vast stature. One rode up- 
right, with a military seat, while his companion had his feet out 
of his stirrups, and rode loosely, as if tired with his journey. 
Further than this, I could distinguish nothing in the darkening 
twilight ; but, looking at James, I saw that he was eagerly 
scanning the strangers, with elevated eyebrow and opened lips. 
Ere I could speak to him, he had dashed forward with a shout, 
and when I came up with him, wondering, I found myself shaking 
hands, talking and laughing, everything in fact short of crying, 
with Major Buckley and Thomas Troubridge. 

“ Range up alongside here, Jeff, you rascal,” said Tom, “ and 
let me get a fair hug at you. What do you think of this for a 


150 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


lark ; eh ? — to meet you out here, all promiscuous, in the forest 
like Prince Arthur ! We could not go out of our way to see you, 
though we knew where you were located, for we must hurry on 
and get a piece of country we have been told of on the next river. 
We are going to settle down close by you, you see. We’ll make 
a new Drumston in the wilderness.” 

“This is a happy meeting, indeed, old Tom,” I said, as we 
rode towards the drays, after the Major and James. “We shall 
have happy times, now we have got some of our old friends round 
us. Who is come with you ? How is Mrs. Buckley ? ” 

“ Mrs. Buckley is as well as ever, and as handsome. My pretty 
little cousin, Mary Hawker, and old Miss Thornton are with us ; 
the poor old Vicar is dead.” 

“Mary Hawker with you?” I said. “And her husband, 
Tom ? ” 

“Hardly, old friend. We travel in better company,” said he. 
“ George Hawker is transported for life.” 

“ Alas, poor Mary ! ” I answered. “ And what for ? ” 

“Coining,” he answered. “I’ll tell you the story another 
time. To-night let us rejoice.” 

I could not but watch James, who was riding before us, to see 
how he would take this news. The Major, I saw, was telling him 
all about it, but James seemed to take it quite quietly, only nod- 
ding his head as the other went on. I knew how he would feel 
for his old love, and I turned and said to Troubridge, — 

“Jim will be very sorry to hear of this. I wish she had 
married him.” 

“That’s what we all say,” said Tom. “I am sorry for poor 
Jim. He is about the best man I know, take him all in all. If 
that fellow were to die, she might have him yet, Hamlyn.” 

We reached the drays. There sat Mrs. Buckley on a log, a 
noble, happy matron, laughing at her son as he toddled about, 
busy gathering sticks for the fire. Beside her was Mary, paler 
and older-looking than when we had seen her last, with her child 
upon her lap, looking sad and worn. But a sadder sight for me 
was old Miss Thornton, silent and frightened, glancing uneasily 
round, as though expecting some new horror. No child for her 
to cling to and strive for. No husband to watch for and anticipate 
every wish. A poor, timid, nervous old maid, thrown adrift in 
her old age upon a strange sea of anomalous wonders. Every old 
favourite prejudice torn up by the roots. All old formulas of life 
scattered to the winds ! 

She told me in confidence that evening that she had been in sad 
trouble all day. At dinner-time some naked blacks had come up 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


151 


to the' dray, and had frightened and shocked her. Then the dray 
had been nearly upset, and her hat crushed among the trees. A 
favourite and precious hag, which never left her, had been dropped 
in the water ; and her Prayer-book, a parting gift from Lady Kate, 
had been utterly spoiled. A hundred petty annoyances and griefs, 
which Mary barely remarked, and which brave Mrs. Buckley, in 
her strong determination of following her lord to the ends of the 
earth, and of being as much help and as little incumbrance to him 
as she could, had laughed at, were to her great misfortunes. 
Why, the very fact, as she told me, of sitting on the top of a 
swinging jolting dray was enough to keep her in a continual state 
of agony and terror, so that when she alit at night, and sat down, 
she could not help weeping silently, dreading lest any one should 
see her. 

Suddenly, Mary was by her side, kneeling down. 

“ Aunt,” she said, ‘‘ dearest aunt, don’t break down. It is all 
my wicked fault. You will break my heart, auntie dear, if you 
cry like 'that. Why did ever I bring you on this hideous 
journey ? ” 

“ How could I leave you in your trouble, my love ? ” said Miss 
Thornton. “ You did right to come, my love. We are among old 
friends. We have come too far for trouble to reach us. We shall 
soon have a happy home again now, and all will be well.” 

So she, who needed so much comforting herself, courageously 
dried her tears and comforted’ Mary. And when we reached the 
drays, she was sitting with her hands folded before her in serene 
misery. 

“ Mary,” said the Major, here are two old friends.” 

He had no time to say more, for she, recognising Jim, sprang 
up, and, running to him, burst into hysterical weeping. 

“Oh, my good old friend!” she cried; “oh, my dear old 
friend ! Oh, to meet you here in this lonely wilderness 1 Oh, 
James, my kind old brother I ” 

I saw how his big heart yearned to comfort his old sweetheart 
in her distress. Not a selfish thought found place with him. 
He could only see his old love injured and abandoned, and nought 
more. 

“ Mary,” he said, “ what happiness to see you among all your 
old friends come to live among us again ! It is almost too good 
to believe in. Believe me, you will get to like this country as 
well as old Devon soon, though it looks so strange just now. And 
what a noble boy, too ! We will make him the best bushman in 
the country when he is old enough.” , 

So he took the child of his rival to his bosom, and when the 


152 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


innocent little face looked into his, he would see no likeness to 
George Hawker there. He only saw the mother’s countenance as 
he knew her as a child in years gone by. 

“ Is nobody going to notice me or my hoy, I wonder ? ” said 
Mrs. Buckley. “ Come here immediately, Mr. Stockhridge, before 
we quarrel.” 

In a very short time all our party were restored to their equani- 
mity, and were laying down plans for pleasant meetings hereafter. 
And long after the women had gone to bed in the drays, and the 
moon was riding high in the heavens, James and myself, Trou- 
bridge and the Major, sat before the fire ; and we heard, for the 
first time, of all that had gone on since we left England, and of 
all poor Mary’s troubles. Then each man rolled himself in his 
blanket, and slept soundly under the rustling forest-boughs. 

In the bright cool morning, ere the sun was up, and the belated 
opossum had run back to his home in the hollow log, James and I 
were a-foot looking after our horses. We walked silently side by 
side for a few minutes, until he turned and said ; — 

“Jeff, old fellow, of course you will go on with them, and stay 
until they are settled ? ” 

“ Jim, old fellow,” I replied, “ of course you will go on with 
them, and stay till they are settled ? ” 

He pondered a few moments, and then said, “ Well, why not? 
I suppose she can be still to me what she always was ? Yes, I 
will go with them.” 

When we returned to the dray we found them all astir, pre- 
paring for a start. Mrs. Buckley, with her gown tucked up, was 
preparmg breakfast, as if she had been used to the thing all her 
life. She had an imperial sort of way of manoeuvring a frying- 
pan, which did one good to see. It is my belief, that if that 
woman had been called upon to groom a horse, she’d have done it 
in a ladylike way. 

While James went among the party to announce his intention 
of going on with them, I had an opportunity of looking at the son 
and heir of all the Buckleys. He was a sturdy, handsome child 
about five years old, and was now standing apart from the others, 
watching a bullock-driver yoking-up his beast. I am very fond of 
children, and take great interest in studying their characters ; so 
I stood, not unamused, behind this youngster, as he stood looking 
with awe and astonishment at the man, as he managed the great, 
formidable beasts, and brought each one into his place ; not, how- 
ever, without more oaths than one would care to repeat. Suddenly 
the child, turning and seeing me behind him, came back, and took 
my hand. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


153 


“ Why is he so angry with them ? ” the child asked at once. 
“ Why does he talk to them like that ? ” 

‘‘He is swearing at them,” I said, “to make them stand in 
their places.” 

“ But they don’t understand him,” said the hoy. “ That black 
and white one would have gone where he wanted it in a minute ; 
but it couldn’t understand, you know ; so he hit it over the nose. 
Why don’t he find out how they talk to one another ? Then he’d 
manage them much better. He is very cruel.” 

“ He does not know any better,” I said. “ Come with me and 
get some flowers.” 

“ Will you take me up ? ” he said. “ I mustn’t run about, for 
fear of snakes.” 

I took him up, and we went to gather flowers. 

“ Your name is Samuel Buckley, I think,” said I. 

“ How did you know that ? ” 

“I remember you when you were a baby,” I said. “ I hope 
you may grow to be as good a man as your father, my lad. See, 
there is mamma calling for us.” 

“ And how far south are you going. Major ? ” I asked at break- 
fast. 

“ No further than we can help,” said the Major. “ I stayed a 
night with my old friend Captain Brentwood, by the way ; and 
there I found a man who knew of some unoccupied country down 
here, which he had seen in some bush expedition. We found the 
ground he mentioned taken up ; but he says there is equally good 
on the next river. I have bought him and his information.” 

“ We saw good country away to the south yesterday,” I said. 
“ But are you wise to trust this man ? Ho you know anything 
about him ? ” 

“ Brentwood has known him these ten years, and trusts him 
entirely ; though, I believe, he has been a convict. If you are 
determined to come with us, Stockbridge, I will call him up, and 
examine him about the route. William Lee, just step here a 
moment.” 

A swarthy and very powerfully built man came up. No other 
than the man I have spoken of under that name before. He was 
quite unknown either to James or myself, although, as he told us 
afterwards, he had recognised us at once, but kept out of our sight 
as much as possible, tiU by the Major’s summons he was forced to 
come forward. 

“ What route to-day, WiUiam ? ” asked the Major. 

“ South and by east across the range. We ought to get down 
to the river by night, if we’re lucky.” 


154 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


So, while the drays were getting under way, the Major, Tom, 
James, and myself rode up to the saddle where we had stood the 
night before, and gazed south-east across the broad prospect, in 
the direction that the wanderers were to go. 

“ That,” said the Major, “ to the right there, must be the great 
glen out of which the river comes ; and there, please G-od, we will 
rest our weary bodies and build our house. Odd, isn’t it, that I 
should have been saved from shot and shell when so many better 
men were put away in the trench, to come and end my days in a 
place like this ? Well, I think we shall have a pleasant life of it, 
watching the cattle spread further across the plains year after year, 
and seeing the boy grow up to be a good man. At all events, for 
weal or woe, I have said good-bye to old England, for ever and a 
day.” 

The cattle were past, and the drays had arrived at where we 
stood. With many a hearty farewell, having given a promise to 
come over and spend Christmas-day with them, I turned my 
horse’s head homewards and went on my solitary way. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

I HIRE A NEW HORSEBREAKER. 

I MUST leave them to go their way towards their new home, and 
follow my own fortunes a little, for that afternoon I met with an 
adventure quite trifling indeed, but which is not altogether without 
interest in this story. 

I rode on till high noon, till having crossed the valley of the 
Belloury, and followed up one of its tributary creeks, I had come 
on to the water system of another main river, and the rapid 
widening of the gully whose course I was pursuing assured me 
that I could not be far from the main stream itself. At length I 
entered a broad flat intersected by a deep and tortuous creek, and 
here I determined to camp till the noon-day heat was past, before 
I continued my journey, calculating that I could easily reach home 
the next day. 

Having watered my horse, I turned him loose for a graze, and, 
making such a dinner as was possible under the circumstances, I 
lit a pipe and lay down on the long grass, under the flowering 
wattle-trees, smoking, and watching the manoeuvres of a little 
tortoise, who was disporting himself in the waterhole before me. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


155 


Getting tired of that I lay back on the grass, and watched the 
green leaves waving and ^shivering against the clear blue sky, 
given up entirely to the greatest of human enjoyments — the after- 
dinner pipe, the pipe of peace. 

Which is the pleasantest pipe in the day ? We used to say at 
home that a man should smoke but four pipes a-day : the matutinal, 
another I don’t specify, the post-prandial, and the symposial or 
convivial, which last may be infinitely subdivided, according to the 
quantity of drink taken. But in Australia this division won’t 
obtain, particularly when you are on the tramp. Just when you 
wake from a dreamless sleep beneath the forest boughs, as the 
east begins to blaze, and the magpie gets musical, you dash to 
the embers of last night’s fire, and after blowing many fire -sticks 
find one which is alight, and proceed to send abroad on the morn- 
ing breeze the scene of last night’s dottle. Then, when breakfast 
is over and the horses are caught up and saddled, and you are jog- 
ging across the plain, with the friend of your heart beside you, the 
burnt incense once more goes up, and conversation is unnecessary. 
At ten o’clock when you cross the creek (you always cross a creek 
about ten if you are in a good country), you halt and smoke. , So 
after dinner in the lazy noon-tide, one or perhaps two pipes are 
necessary, with, perhaps, another about four in the afternoon, and 
last, and perhaps best of all, are the three or four you smoke 
before the fire at night, when the day is dying and the opossums 
are beginning to chatter in the twilight. So that you find that a 
fig of Barret’s twist, seventeen to the pound, is gone in the mere 
hours of day-light, without counting such a casualty as waking up 
cold in the night, and going at it again. 

So I lay on my back dreaming, wondering why a locust who was 
in full screech close by, took the trouble to make that terrible row 
when it was so hot, and hoping that his sides might be sore with 
the exertion, when to my great astonishment I heard the sound of 
feet brushing through the grass towards me. “ Black fellow,” I 
said to myself ; but no, those were shodden feet that swept along 
so wearily. I raised myself on my elbow, with my hand on my 
pistol, and reconnoitred. 

There approached me from down the creek a man, hardly 
reaching the middle size, lean and active-looking, naiTow in the 
flanks, thin in the jaws, his knees well apart ; with a keen bright 
eye in his head. His clothes looked as if they had belonged to 
ten different men ; and his gait was heavy, and his face red, as if 
from a long hurried walk; but I said at once, “Here comes a 
riding man, at all events, be it for peace or war.” 

“ Good day, lad,” said I. 


156 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ Good day, sir.” 

“ You’re rather off the tracks for a foot-man,” said I. “Are 
you looking for your horse ? ” 

“ Deuce a horse have I got to my name, sir, — have you got a 
feed of anything ? I’m nigh starved.” 

“ Ay, surely : the tea’s cold ; put it on the embers and warai it 
a bit ; here’s beef, and damper too, plenty.” 

I lit another pipe and watched his meal. I like feeding a real 
hungry man ; it’s almost as good as eating oneself — sometimes 
better. 

‘ When the edge of his appetite was taken off he began to talk ; 
he said first — 

“ Got a station anywheres about here, sir ? ” 

“ No, I’m Hamlyn of the Dumongs, away by Maneroo.” 

“Oh! ay; I know you, sir; which way have you come this 
morning ? ” 

“ Southward ; I crossed the Belloury about seven o’clock.” 

“ That, indeed ! You haven’t seen anything of three bullock 
drays and a mob of cattle going south ? ” 

“ Yes ! I camped with such a lot last night I ” 

“ Not Major Buckley’s lot ? ” 

“ The same.” 

“ And how far were they on ? ” 

“ They crossed the range at daylight this morning ; — they’re 
thirty miles away by now.” 

He threw his hat on the ground with an oath : “I shall never 
catch them up. I daren’t cross that range on foot into the new 
country, and those black devils lurking round. He shouldn’t have 
left me like that ; — all my own fault, though, for staying behind 1 
No, no, he’s true enough — all my own fault. But I wouldn’t 
have left him so, neither ; but, perhaps, he don’t think I’m so far 
behind.” 

I saw that the man was in earnest, for his eyes were swimming ; 
— he was too dry for tears ; but though he looked a desperate 
scamp, I couldn’t help pitying him and saying, — 

“ You seem vexed you couldn’t catch them up ; were you going 
along with the Major, then ? ” 

“ No, sir ; I wasn’t hired with him ; but an old mate of mine. 
Bill Lee, is gone along with him to show him some country, and 
I was going to stick to him and see if the Major would take me ; 
we haven’t been parted for many years, not Bill and I haven’t ; 
and the worst of it is, that he’ll think I’ve slipped away from him, 
instead of following him fifty mile on foot to catch him. Well I 
it can’t be helped now ; I must look round and get a job some- 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


157 


where till I get a chance to join him. Were you travelling with 
them, sir?” 

“ No, I’m after some cattle I’ve lost ; a fine imported hull, too, 
— worse luck ! We’ll never see him again, I’m afraid, and if I 
do find them, how I am to get them home single-handed, I don’t 
know.” 

“ Do you mean a short-horned Durham bull with a key brand ? 
Why, if that’s him, I can lay you on to him at once ; he’s up at 
Jamieson’s, here to the west. I was staying at Watson’s last 
night, and one of Jamieson’s men stayed in the hut — a young 
hand ; and, talking about beasts, he said that there was a fine 
short-horned bull come on to their run with a mob of heifers and 
cows, and they couldn’t make out who they belonged to ; they 
were all different brands.” 

“ That’s our lot for a thousand,” says I ; “ a lot of store cattle 
we bought this year from the Hunter, and haven’t branded yet — 
more shame to us.” 

‘‘ If you could get a horse and saddle from Jamieson’s, sir,” 
said he, “I could give you a hand home with them : I’d like to 
get a job somehow, and I am well used to cattle.” 

“Done with you,” said I ; “Jamieson’s isn’t ten miles from 
here, and we can do that to-night if we look sharp. Come along, 
my lad.” 

’ So I caught up the horse, and away we went. Starting at right 
angles with the sun, which was nearly overhead, and keeping to 
the left of him — holding such a course, as he got lower, that an 
hour and half, or thereabouts, before setting, he should be in my 
face, and at sundown a little to the left; which is the best 
direction I can give you for going about due west in November, 
without a compass — which, by the way, you always ought to have. 

My companion was foot-sore, so I went slowly ; he, however, 
shambled along bravely when his feet got warm. He was a talk- 
ative, lively man, and chattered continually. • 

“You’ve got a nice place up at the Durnongs, sir,” said he; 
“ I stayed in your huts one night. It’s the comfortablest bachelor 
station on this side. You’ve got a smart few sheep, I expect? ” 

“ Twenty-five thousand. Do you know these parts well ? ” 

“ I knew that country of yours long before any of it was took 
up.” 

“ You’ve been a long while in the country, then ? ” 

“ I was sent out when I was eighteen ; spared, as the old judge 
said, on account of my youth ; that’s eleven years ago.” 

“ Spared, eh ? It was something serious, then.” 

“ Trifling enough : only for having a rope in my hand.” 


158 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ They wouldn’t lag a man for that,” said I. 

“Ay, but,” he replied, “there was a horse at the end of the 
rope. I was brought up in a training stable, and somehow there’s 
something in the smell of a stable is sure to send a man wTong if he 
don’t take care. I got betting and drinking, too, as young chaps 
will, and lost my place, and got from bad to worse till I shook a 
nag, and got bowled out and lagged. That’s about my history, 
sir ; will you give me a job now ? ” And he looked up, laughing. 

“Ay, why not? ” said I. “Because you tried hard to go to 
the devil when you were young and foolish, it don’t follow that 
you should pursue that line of conduct all your life. You’ve been 
in a training stable, eh ? If you can break horses, I may find you 
something to do.” 

“I’ll break horses against any man in this country — though 
that’s not saying much, for I ain’t seen not what I call a breaker 
since I’ve been here ; as for riding, I’d ridden seven great winners 
before I was eighteen ; and that’s what ne’er a man alive can say. 
Ah, those were the rosy times ! Ah for old Newmarket ! ” 

“ Are you a Cambridgeshire man, then? ” 

“Me? Oh, no; I’m a Devonshire man. I come near from 
where Major Buckley lived some years. Did you notice a pale, 
pretty-looking woman, was with him — Mrs. Hawker? ” 

I grew all attention. “ Yes,” I said, “ I noticed her.” 

“ I knew her husband well,” he said, “ and an awful rascal he 
was : he was lagged for coining, though he might have been for 
half-a-dozen things besides.” 

“ Indeed ! ” said I ; “ and is he in the colony ? ” 

“ No ; he’s over the water, I expect.” 

“In Van Diemen’s Land, you mean ? ” 

“Just so,” he said ; “he had better not show Bill Lee much of 
his face, or there’ll be mischief.” 

“ Lee owes him a grudge, then ? ” 

“Not exactly that,” said my communicative friend, “but I 
don’t think that Hawker will show much where Lee is.” 

“ I am very glad to hear it,” I thought to myself. “ I hope 
Mary may not have some trouble with her husband still.” 

What is the name of the place Major Buckley comes from ? ” 
I inquired. 

“ Drumston.” 

“ And you belong there too ? ” I knew very well, however, 
that he did not, or I must have known him. 

“No,” he answered; “ Okehampton is my native place. But 
you talk a little Devon yourself, sir.” ' ' " 

The conversation came to a close, for we heard the barking of 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


159 


dogs, and saw the station where we were to spend the night. In 
the morning I went home, and my new acquaintance, who called 
himself Dick, along with me. Finding that he was a first-rate 
rider, and gentle and handy among horses, I took him into my 
service permanently, and soon got to like him very well. 


CHAPTER XX. 

A W'ARM CHRISTMAS DAY. 

All through November and part of December, I and our Scotch 
overseer, George Kyle, were busy as bees among the sheep. 
Shearers were very scarce, and the poor sheep got fearfully 
“tomahawked” by the new hands, who had been a very short 
time from the barracks. Dick, however, my new acquaintance, 
turned out a valuable ally, getting through more sheep and taking 
oft* his fleece better than any man in the shed. The prisoners, 
of course, would not work effectually without extra wages, and 
thus gave a deal of trouble ; knowing that there was no fear 
of my sending them to the magistrate (fifty miles off*) during such 
a busy time. However, all evils must come to an end some time 
or another, and so did shearing, though it was nearly Christmas 
before our wool was pressed and ready for the drays. 

Then came a breathing time. So I determined, having heard 
nothing of James, to go over and spend my Christmas with the 
Buckleys, and see how they were getting on at their new station ; 
and about noon on the day before Boxing-day, having followed the 
track made by their drays from the place I had last parted with 
them, I reined up on the cliff’s above a noble river, and could see 
their new huts, scarce a quarter of a mile off*, on the other side of 
the stream. 

They say that Christmas -day is the hottest day in the year in 
those countries, but some days in January are, I think, generally 
hotter. To-day, however, was as hot as a salamander could wish. 
All the vast extent of yellow plain to the eastward quivered 
beneath a fiery sky, and every little eminence stood like an island 
in a lake of mirage. Used as I had got to this phenomenon, I 
was often tempted that morning to turn a few hundred yards from 
my route, and give my horse a drink at one of the broad glassy 
pools that seemed to lie right and left. Once the faint track I 
was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets 


160 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo ! when I was 
a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and 
I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up by 
the midsummer sun. 

For many miles I had distinguished the new huts, placed at the 
apex of a great cape of the continent of timber which ran down 
from the mountains into the plains. I thought they had chosen a 
strange place for their habitation, as there appeared no signs of a 
water-course near it. It was not till I pulled up within a quarter 
of a mile of my destination that I heard a hoarse roar as if from 
the bowels of the earth, and found that I was standing on the edge 
of a glen about four hundred feet deep, through which a magnifi- 
cent snow-fed river poured ceaselessly, here flashing bright among 
bars of rock, there lying in dark, deep reaches, under tall, white- 
stemmed trees. 

The scene was so beautiful and novel that I paused and gazed 
at it. Across the glen, behind the houses, rose up a dark mass of 
timbered ranges, getting higher and steeper as far as the eye could 
reach, while to the north-east the river’s course might be traced 
through the plains by the timber that fringed the water’s edge, and 
sometimes feathered some tributary gully almost to the level of the 
flat lofty table-land. On either side of it, down behind down 
folded one over the other, and, bordered by great forests, led the 
eye towards the river’s source, till the course of the deep valley 
could no longer be distinguished, lost among the distant ranges ; 
but above where it had disappeared, rose a tall blue peak with 
streaks of snow. 

I rode do^vn a steep pathway, and crossed a broad gravelly ford. 
As my horse stopped to drink I looked delighted up the vista which 
opened on my sight. The river, partly overshadowed by tall trees, 
was hurrying and spouting through upright columns of basalt, 
which stood in groups everywhere like the pillars of a ruined city ; 
in some places solitary, in others, clustered together like fantastic 
buildings ; while a hundred yards above was an island, dividing 
the stream, on which, towering above the variety of low green 
shrubs which covered it, three noble fern trees held their plumes 
aloft, shaking with the concussion of the falling water. 

I crossed the river. A gully, deep at first, but getting rapidly 
shallower, led up by a steep ascent to the table-land above, and 
as I reached the summit I found myself at Major Buckley’s front 
door. They had, with good taste, left such trees as stood near the 
house — a few deep-shadowed light-woods and black wattles, which 
formed pretty groups in what I could see was marked out for a 
garden. Behind, the land began to rise, at first, in park-like 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


161 


timbered forest glades, and further back, closing into dense deep 
woodlands. 

“ What a lovely place they will make of this in time ! ” I said 
to myself ; but I had not much time for cogitation. A loud, 
cheerful voice shouted : “ Hamlyn, you are welcome to Baroona ! ” 
and close to me I saw the Major, carrying his son and heir in his 
arms advancing to meet me from the house-door. 

“You are welcome to Baroona!” echoed the boy; “and a 
merry Christmas and a happy New-year to you ! ” 

I went into the house and was delighted to find what a change 
a few weeks of busy, quiet, and home had made in the some- 
what draggle-tailed and disconsolate troop that I had parted 
with on their road. Miss Thornton, with her black mittens, 
white apron, and spectacles, had found herself a cool comer by 
the empty fire-place, and was stitching away happily at baby linen. 
Mrs. Buckley, in the character of a duchess, was picking raisins, 
and Mary was helping her ; and, as I entered, laughing loudly, they 
greeted me kindly with all the old sacred good wishes of the season. 

“ I very much pity you, Mr. Hamlyn,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ at 
having outlived the novelty of being scorched to death on 
Christmas-day. My dear husband, please refresh me with reading 
the thermometer ! ” 

“ One hundred and nine in the shade,” replied the Major, with 
a chuckle. 

“Ah, dear I ” said Mrs. Buckley. “ If the dear old rheumatic 
creatures from the alms-house at Clere could only spend to-morrow 
with us, how it would warm their old bones ! Fancy how they are 
crouching before their little pinched grate just now ! ” 

“Hardly that, Mrs. Buckley,” I said laughing; “they are all 
snug in bed now. It is three o’clock in the morning, or there- 
abouts, at home, you must remember. Miss Thornton, I hope you 
have got over your journey.” 

“ Yes, and *1 can laugh at all my mishaps now,” she replied ; 
“ I have just got homely and comfortable here, but we must make 
one more move, and that will be the last for me. Mary and Mr. 
Troubridge have taken up their country to the south-west, and as 
soon as he has got our house built, we are going to live there.” 

“ It is not far, I hope,” said I. 

“A trifle: not more than ten miles,” said Miss Thornton; 
“they call the place Toonarbin. Mary’s run joins the Major’s 
on two sides, and beyond again, we already have neighbours, the 
Mayfords. They are on the river again ; but we are on a small 
creek towards the ranges. I should like to have been on the 
river, but they say we are very lucky.” 


162 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“I am so glad to see you,” said Mary ; “James Stockbridge 
said you would be sure to come ; otherwise we should have sent 
over for you. What do you think of my hoy ? ” 

She produced him from an inner room. He was certainly a 
beautiful child, though very small, and with a certain painful like- 
ness to his father, which even I could see, and I could not help 
comparing him unfavourably, in my own mind, with that noble six- 
year-old Sam Buckley, who had come to my knee where I sat, and 
was looking in my face as if to make a request. 

“ What is it, my prince ? ” I asked. 

He blushed, and turned his handsome gray eyes to a silver- 
handled riding-whip that I held in my hand. “ I’ll take such care 
of it,” he whispered, and, having got it, was soon astride of a 
stick, full gallop for Banbury Cross. 

James and Troubridge came in. To the former I had much to 
tell that was highly satisfactory about our shearing; and from 
the latter I had much to hear about the state of both the new 
stations, and the adventures of a journey he had had back to- 
wards Sydney to fetch up his sheep. But these particulars will be 
but little interesting to an English reader, and perhaps still less 
so to an Australian. I am writing a history of the people them- 
selves, not of their property. I will only say, once for all, that 
the Major’s run contained very little short of 60,000 acres of 
splendidly grassed plain-land, which he took up originally with 
merely a few cattle, and about 3,000 sheep ; but which, in a few 
years, carried 28,000 sheep comfortably. Mrs. Hawker and 
Troubridge had quite as large a run ; but a great deal of it was 
rather worthless forest, badly grassed ; which Tom, in his wisdom, 
like a great many other new chums, had thought superior to the 
bleak plains on account of the shelter. Yet, notwithstanding this 
disadvantage, they were never, after a year or two, with less than 
15,000 sheep, and a tolerable head of cattle. In short, in a very 
few years, both the Major and Troubridge, by mere power of accu- 
mulation, became very wealthy people. 

Christmas morn rose bright ; but ere the sun had time to wreak 
his fury upon us, every soul in the household was abroad, under 
the shade of the lightwood trees, to hear the Major read the 
Litany. 

A sh’ange group we were. The Major stood with his back 
against a tree- stem, and all his congregation were ranged around 
him. To his right stood Miss Thornton, her arms folded placidly 
before her ; and with her, Mary and Mrs. Buckley, in front of 
whom sat the two boys : Sam, the elder, trying to keep Charles, 
the younger, quiet. Next, going round the circle, stood the old 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


163 


housekeeper, servant of the Buckleys for thirty years ; who now 
looked askance ofl' her Prayer-book to see that the two convict- 
women under her charge were behaving with decorum. Next, and 
exactly opposite the Major, were two free servants : one a broad, 
bra^vny, athletic -looking man, with, I thought, not a bad counten- 
ance ; and the other a tall, handsome, foolish -looking Devonshire 
lad. The round was completed by five convict man-servants, 
standing vacantly looking about them ; and I'om, James, and 
myself, who were next the Major. 

The service, which he read in a clear manly voice, was soon over, 
and we returned to the house in groups. I threw myself in the 
way of the two free servants, and asked, — 

“Pray, which of you is William Lee ? ” — for I had forgotten 
him. 

The short thickset man I had noticed before touched his hat 
and said that he was. That touching of the hat is a very rare 
piece of courtesy from working men in Australia. The convicts 
are forced to do it, and so the free men make it a point of honour 
not to do so. 

“ Oh ! ” said I, “ I have got a groom who calls himself Dick. 
I found him sorefooted in the bush the day I met the Major. He 
was trying to pick you up. He asked me to tell you that he was 
afraid to cross the range alone on account of the blacks, or he 
would have come up with you. He seemed anxious lest you should 
think it was his fault.” 

“ Poor chap ! ” said Lee. “ What a faithful little fellow it is ! 
Would it be asking a liberty if you would take back a letter for 
me, sir ? ” 

I said, “ No, certainly not.” 

“ I am much obliged to you, sir,” he said. “ I am glad Dick 
has got with a cfentleman.” 

That letter was of some importance to me, though I did not 
know it till after, but I may as well say why now. Lee had been 
a favourite servant of my father’s, and when he got into trouble 
my father had paid a counsel to defend him. Lee never forgot 
this, and this letter to Dick was shortly to the effect that^ I was 
one of the right sort, and was to be taken care of, which injunc- 
tion Dick obeyed to the very letter, doing me services for pure 
good will, which could not have been bought for a thousand 
a-year. 

After breakfast arose the question, “What is to be done?” 
Which Troubridge replied to by saying: “What could any 
sensible man do such weather as this, but get into the water and 
stop there ? ” 


164 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ Shall it be, ‘ All hands to bathe,’ then ? ” said the Major. 

“ You won’t be without company,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ for the 
black fellows are camped in the bend, and they spend most of their 
time in the water such a day as this.” 

So James and Troubridge started for the river with their towels, 
the Major and I promising to follow them immediately, for I 
wanted to look at my horse, and the Major had also something to 
do in the paddock. So we walked together. 

“ Major,” said I, when we had gone a little way, “ do you never 
feel anxious about Mary Hawker’s husband appearing and giving 
trouble ? ” 

‘‘ Oh, no ! ” said he. “ The man is safe in Van Diemen’s 
Land. Besides, what could he gain ? I, for one, without con- 
sulting her, should find means to pack him ofi' again. There is 
no fear.” 

“ By the bye. Major,” I said, “ have you heard from our friend 
Doctor Mulhaus since your arrival ? I suppose he is at Drumston 
still?” 

“ Oh dear, no ! ” said he. ‘‘He is gone back to Oermany. 
He is going to settle there again. He was so sickened of England 
when all his friends left, that he determined to go home. I under- 
stood that he had some sort of patrimony there, on which he will 
end his days. Wherever he goes, Ood go with him, for he is a 
noble fellow ! ’ ’ 

“Amen,” I answered. And soon after, having got towels, we 
proceeded to the river ; making for a long reach a little below 
where I had crossed the night before. 

“ Look there ! ” said the Major. “ There’s a bit for one of 
your painters ! I wish Wilkie or Martin were here.” 

I agreed with him. Had Etty been on the spot he would have 
got a hint for one of his finest pictures ; and though I can give but 
little idea of it in writing, let me try. Before us was a long reach 
of deep, still water, unbroken by a ripple, so hemmed in on all 
sides by walls of deep green black wattle, tea-tree, and delicate 
silver acacia, that the water seemed to flow in a deep shoreless rift 
of the forest, above which the taller forest trees towered up two 
hundred feet, hiding the lofty cliffs, which had here receded a little 
back from the river. 

The picture had a centre, and a strange one. A little ledge of 
rock ran out into deep water, and upon it, rising from a heap of 
light-coloured clothing, like a white pillar, in the midst of the 
sombre green foliage, rose the naked carcass of Thomas Trou- 
bridge, Esq., preparing for a header, while at his feet were grouped 
three or four black fellows, one of whom as we watched slid off 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


165 


the rock like an otter. The reach Avas covered Avith black heads 
belonging to the savages, Avho Avere SAvimming in all directions, 
Avhile groups of all ages and both sexes stood about on the bank 
in Mother Nature’s full dress. 

We had a glorious bathe, and then sat on the rock, smoking, 
talking, and Avatching the various manoeuvres of the blacks. An 
old lady, apparently about eighty, Avith a head as Avhite as snoAv, 
topping her black body (a flourbag cobbler, as her tribe Avould call 
her), was punting a canoe along in the shalloAV Avater on the 
opposite side of the river. She Avas entirely Avithout clothes, and 
in spite of her decrepitude stood upright in the cockleshell, hand- 
ling it Avith great dexterity. When she Avas a little above us, she 
made Avay on her barque, and shot into the deep water in the 
middle of the stream, evidently Avith the intention of speaking to us. 
As, however, she Avas just half-Avay across, floating helplessly, un- 
able to reach the bottom Avith the spear she had used as a puntpole 
in the shallower water, a mischievous black imp canted her over, 
and souse she went into the river.. It was amazing to see Iioav 
boldly and Avell the old woman struck out for the shore, keeping 
her Avhite head well out of the Avater ; and having reached diy land 
once more, sat down on her haunches, and began scolding Avith a 
A^olubility and power Avhich Avould soon have silenced the loudest 
tongue in old Billingsgate. 

Her anger, so far from Avearing out, greAv on Avhat fed it ; so 
that her long-drawn yells, Avhich seemed like parentheses in her 
jabbering discourse, Avere getting each minute more and more acute, 
and Ave were just thinking about moving homeAvards, Avhen a voice 
behind us sang out, — 

“Hallo, Major! Having a little music, eh? What a SAveet 
song that old girl is singing 1 I must Avrite it doAvn from dicta- 
tion, and translate it, as Walter Scott used to do Avith the old 
AviA^es’ ballads in Scotland.” 

“ I have no doubt it Avould be quite Ossianic— equal to any of 
the abusive scenes in Homer. But, my dear Harding, how are 
you ? You are come to eat your Christmas dinner Avith us, I 
hope ? ’ ’ 

“ That same thing. Major,” answered the new comer. “ Trou- 
hridge and Stockbridge, how are you ? This, I presume, is your 
partner, Hamlyn ? ” 

We Avent back to the house. Harding, I found, Avas half-OAvner 
of a station to the north-east, an Oxford man, a great hand at 
sky-larking, and an inveterate Avriter of songs. He was good- 
looking too, and gentlemanlike, in fact, a very pleasant companion 
in every Avay. 


166 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


Dinner was to be at six o’clock, in imitation of home hours ; but 
we did not find the day hang heavy on our hands, there was so 
much to be spoken of by all of us. And when that important 
meal was over we gathered in the open air in front of the house, 
bent upon making Christmas cheer. 

“ What is your last new song, eh, Harding ? ” said the Major ; 
“ now is the time to ventilate it.” 

“ I’ve been too busy shearing for song-writing. Major.” 

Soon after this we went in, and there we sat till nearly ten 
o’clock, laughing, joking, singing, and drinking punch. Mary 
sat between James Stockbridge and Tom, and they three spoke 
together so exclusively and so low, that the rest of us were quite 
forgotten. Mary was smiling and laughing, first at one and then 
at the other, in her old way, and now and then as I glanced at her 
I could hardly help sighing. But I soon remembered certain 
resolutions I had made, and tried not to notice the trio, but to 
make myself agreeable to the others. Still my eyes wandered 
towards them again intuitively. I thought Mary had never looked 
so beautiful before. Her complexion was very full, as though she 
were blushing at something one of them had said to her, and while 
I watched I saw James rise and go to a jug of flowers, and bring 
back a wreath of scarlet Kennedia, saying : — 

“ Do us a favour on Christmas night, Mary ; twine this in your 
hair.” 

She blushed deeper than before, but she did it, and Tom helped 
her. There was no harm in that, you say, for was he not her 
cousin ? But still I could not help saying to myself, “ Oh, Mary, 
Mary, if you were a widow, how long would you stay so ? ” 

“ What a gathering it is, to be sure ! ” said Mrs. Buckley ! — 
“ all the old Drumstonians who are alive collected under one 
roof.” 

“ Except the Doctor,” said the Major. 

“ Ah, yes, dear Doctor Mulhaus. I am so sad sometimes to 
think that we shall never see him again.” 

“I miss him more than any one,” said the Major. “I have 
no one to contradict me now.” 

“ I shall have to take that duty upon me, then,” said his wife. 

“ Hark ! there is Lee come back from the sheep station. Yes, 
that must be his horse. Call him in and give him a glass of grog. 
I was sorry to send him out to-day.” 

“He is coming to make his report,” said Mrs. Buckley ; “ there 
is his heavy tramp outside the door.” 

The door was opened, and the new comer advanced to where the 
glare of the candles fell upon his face. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


167 


Had the Gentleman in Black himself advanced out of the dark- 
ness at that moment, with his blue hag on his arm and his bundle 
of documents in his hand, we should not have leapt to our feet and 
cried out more suddenly than we did then. For Doctor Mulhaus 
stood in the middle of the room, looking around him with a bland 
smile. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

JIM STOCKBRIDGE BEGINS TO TAKE ANOTHER VIEW OP MATTERS. 

He stood in the candle-light, smiling blandly, while we all stayed 
for an instant, after our first exclamation, speechless with astonish- 
ment. 

The Major was the first who showed signs of consciousness, for 
I verily believe that one half of the company at least believed 
him to he a ghost. “You are the man,” said the Major, “ who 
in the flesh called himself Maximilian Mulhaus I Why are you 
come to trouble us, 0 spirit ? — not that we shouldn’t be glad to 
see you if you were alive, you know, hut — my dear old friend, how 
are you ? ” 

Then we crowded round him, all speaking at once and trying to 
shake hands with him. Still he remained silent, and smiled. I, 
looking into his eyes, saw that they were swimming, and divined 
why he would not trust himself to speak. No one hated a show 
of emotion more than the Doctor, and yet his brave warm heart 
would oiten flood his eyes in spite of himself. 

He walked round to the fire-place, and, leaning against the 
board that answered for a chimney-piece, stood looking at us with 
beaming eyes, while we anxiously waited for him to speak. 

“Ah!” he said at length, with a deep sigh, “this does me 
good. I have not made my journey in vain. A man who tries to 
live in this world without love must, if he is not a fool, commit 
suicide in a year. I went to my own home, and my own dogs 
barked at me. Those I had raised out of the gutter, and set on 
horseback, splashed mud on me as I walked. I will go back, I 
said, to the little English family who loved and respected me for 
my own sake, though they be at the ends of the earth. So I left 
those who should have loved me with an ill-concealed smile on 
their faces, and when I come here I am welcomed with tears of 
joy from those I have not known five years. Bah ! Here is my 
home, Buckley : let me live and die with you.” 


1G8 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“Live 1 ” said the Major — “ay, while there’s a place to live 
in ; don’t talk about dying yet, though, — we’ll think of that pre- 
sently. I can’t find words enough to give him welcome. Wife, 
can you ? ” 

“Not I, indeed,” she said ; “ and what need? He can see a 
warmer welcome in our faces than an hour’s clumsy talk could give 
him. I say, Doctor, you are welcome, now and for ever. Will 
that serve you, husband ? ” 

I could not help looking at Miss Thornton. She sat silently 
staring at him through it all, with her hands clasped together, 
beating them upon her knee. Now, when all was quiet, and 
Mrs. Buckley and Mary had run off to the kitchen to order the 
Doctor some supper, he seemed to see her for the first time, and 
bowed profoundly. She rose, and, looking at him intently, sat 
down again. 

The Doctor had eaten his supper, and Mrs. Buckley had made 
him something to drink with her o\vn hands ; the Doctor had lit 
his pipe, and we had gathered round the empty fire-place, when 
the Major said, — 

“Now, Doctor, do tell us your adventures, and how you have 
managed to drop upon us from the skies on Christmas -day.” 

“ Soon told, my friend,” he answered. “ See here. I went 
back to Germany because all ties in England were broken. I 
went to Lord C : I said, ‘ I will go back and see the palin- 

genesis of my country ; I will see what they are doing, now the 
French are in the dust.’ He said, ‘ Go, and God speed you ! ’ I 
went. What did I find ? Beggars on horseback everywhere, 
riding post-haste to the devil — not as good horsemen, either, but 
as tailors of Brentford, and crowding one another into the mud to 
see who would be there first. ‘ Let me get out of this before they 
ride over me,’ said I. So I came forth to England, took ship, and 
here I am.” 

“ A most lucid and entirely satisfactory exidanation of what you 
have been about, I must say,” answered the Major; “however, I 
must be content.” 

At this moment little Sam, who had made his esca23e in the 
confusion, came running in, breathless. “Papa! Papa!” said 
he, “ Lee has come home with a snake seven feet long.” Lee was 
at the door with the reptile in his hand — a black snake, with a 
deep salmon-coloured belly, deadly venomous, as I knew. All the 
party went out to look at it, excej)t the Doctor and Miss Thornton, 
who stayed at the fire-place. 

“Mind your hands, Lee ! ” I heard James say ; “ though the 
l)rute is dead, you might 2)rick your fingers with him.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


ir.9 


I was behind all the others, waiting to look at the snake, which 
was somewhat of a large one, and worth seeing, so I could not help 
overhearing the conversation of Miss Thornton and the Doctor, and 
having heard the first of it my ears grew so unnaturally quickened, 
that I could not for the life of me avoid hearing the whole, though 
I was ashamed of playing eavesdropper. 

“ My God, sir ! ” I heard her say, “ what new madness is this ? 
Why do you persist in separating yourself from your family in this 
manner ? 

“No madness at all, my dear madam,” he answered; “you 
would have done the same under the circumstances. My brother 
was civil, but I saw he would rather have me away and continue 
his stewardship. And so I let him.” 

Miss Thornton put another question which I did not catch, and 
the sense of which I could not supply, but I heard his answer 
plainly : it was, — 

“ Of course I did, my dear lady, and, just as you may suppose, 
when I walked up the Kitter Saal, there was a buzz and a giggle, 

and not one held out his hand save noble Von H ; long life to 

him ! ” 

“ But ? ” said Miss Thornton, mentioning somebody, whose 

name I could not catch. 

“ I saw him bend over to M as I came up to the Presence, 

and they both laughed. I saw a slight was intended, made my 
devoirs, and backed off. The next day he sent for me, but I w^as 
off and away. I heard of it before I left England.” 

“ And will you never go back ? ” she said. 

“ When I can with honour, not before ; and that will never be 
till he is dead, I fear ; and his life is as good as mine. So, hey 
for natural history, and quiet domestic life, and happiness with my 
English friends ! Now, am I wise or not? ” 

“ I fear not,” she said. 

The Doctor laughed, and taking her hand, kissed it gallantly ; 
by this time we had all turned round, and were coming in. 

“ Now, Doctor,” said the Major, “ if you have done flirting with 
Miss Thornton, look at this snake.” 

“ A noble beast, indeed,” said the Doctor. “ Friend,” he added 
to Lee, “ if you don’t want him, I will take him off your hands for 
a sum of money. He shall be pickled, as I live.” 

“ He is very venomous, sir,” said Lee. “ The blacks eat ’em, 
it’s true, but they always cut the head off first. I’d take the 
head off, sir, before I ventured to taste him.” 

We all laughed at Lee’s supposing that the Doctor meant to make 
a meal of the deadly serpent, and Lee laughed as loudly as anybody. 


170 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“You see, sir,” he said, “I’ve always heard that you French 
gents ate frogs, so I didn’t know as snakes would come amiss.” 

“ Pray don’t take me for a Frenchman, my good lad,” said the 
Doctor ; “ and as for frogs, they are as good as chickens.” 

“Well, I’ve eaten guaners myself,” said Lee, “though I can’t 
say much for them. They’re uglier than snakes any way.” 

Lee was made to sit down and take a glass of grog. So, very 
shortly, the conversation flowed on into its old channel, and, after 
spending a long and pleasant evening, we all went to bed. 

James and I slept in the same room ; and, when we were going 
to bed, I said, — 

“ James, if that fellow were to die, there would be a chance for 
you yet.” 

“ With regard to what ? ” he asked. 

“You know well enough, you old humbug,” I said; “with 
regard to Mary Hawker, — nee Thornton ! ” 

“ I doubt it, my lad,” he said. “ I very much doubt it indeed ; 
and, perhaps, you have heard that there must be two parties to a 
bargain, so that even if she were willing to take me, I very much 
doubt if I would ask her.” 

“No one could blame you for that,” I said, “ after what has 
happened. There are but few men who would like to marry the 
widow of a coiner.” 

“ You mistake me, Jeff. You mistake me altogether,” he 
answered, walking up and down the room with one boot off. 
“ That would make but little difference to me. I’ve no relations 
to sing out about a mesalliance, you know. No, my dear old 
fellow, not that ; but — Jeff, Jeff ! you are the dearest friend I 
have in the world.” 

“ Jim, my boy,” I answered, “ I love you like a brother. What 
is it?” 

“I have no secrets from you, Jeff,” he said; “ so I don’t 
mind telling you.” Another hesitation ! I grew rather anxious. 
“What the deuce is coming?” I thought. “What can she 
have been up to? Go on, old fellow,” I added aloud; “let’s 
hear all about it.” 

He stood at the end of the room, looking rather sheepish. 
“ Why, the fact is, old fellow, that I begin to suspect that I have 
outlived any little attachment I had in that quarter. I’ve been 
staying in the house two months with her, you see : and, in fact ! 
— in fact ! ” — here he brought up short again. 

“ James Stockbridge,” I said, sitting up in bed, “ you atrocious 
humbug ; two months ago you informed me, with a sigh like a 
groggy of bellows, that her image could only be effaced from 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


171 


your heart by death. You have seduced me, whose only fault 
was loving you too well to part with you, into coming sixteen 
thousand miles to a barbarous land, far from kindred and country, 
on the plea that your blighted affections made England less 
endurable than — France, I’ll say for argument ; — and now, 
having had two months’ opportunity of studying the character of 
the beloved one, you coolly inform me that the whole thing was a 
mistake. I repeat that you are a humbug.” 

“ If you don’t hold your tongue, and that quick,” he replied, 
“ I’ll send this hoot at your ugly head. Now then ! ” 

I ducked, fully expecting it was coming, and laughed silently 
under the hed-clothes. I was very happy to hear this — I was 
very happy to hear that a man, whom I really liked so well, had 
got the better of a passion for a woman who I knew was utterly 
incapable of being to him what his romantic high-flown notions 
required a wife to he. “ If this happy result,” I said to myself, 
‘‘ can be rendered the more sure by ridicule, that shall not he 
wanting. Meanwhile, I will sue for peace, and see how it came 
about.” 

I rose again and saw he had got his other boot half off, and was 
watching for me. “Jim,” said I, “you ain’t angry because I 
laughed at you, are you ? ” 

“ Angry ! ” he answered. “ I am never angry with you, and 
you know it. I’ve been a fool, and I ought to he laughed at.” 

“ Pooh ! ” said I, “no more a fool than other men have been 
before you, from father Adam downwards.” 

“ And he was a most con — ” 

“ There,” I interrupted ; “ don’t abuse your ancestors. Tell 
me why you have changed your mind so quick ? ” 

“ That’s a precious hard thing to do, mind you,” he answered. 
“ A thousand trifling circumstances, which taken apart are as 
worthless straws, when they are bound up together become a 
respectable truss, which is marketable, and ponderable. So it is 
with little traits in Mary’s character, which I have only noticed 
lately, nothing separately ; yet, when taken together, are, to say 
the least, different to what I had imagined while my eyes were 
blinded. To take one instance among fifty ; there’s her cousin 
Tom, one of the finest fellows that ever stepped ; hut still I don’t 
like to see her, a married woman, allowing him to pull her hair 
about, and twist flowers in it.” 

This was very true, but I thought that if James instead of Tom 
had been allowed the privilege of decorating her hair, he might 
have looked on it with different eyes. James, I saw, cared too 
little about her to be very jealous, and so I saw that there was no fear 


172 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


of any coolness between him and Troubridge, wliicli was a thing 
to be rejoiced at, as a quarrel would have been a terrible blow on 
our little society. 

“ Jim,” said I, “ I have got something to tell you. Do you 
know, I believe there is some mystery about Doctor Mulhaus.” 

“He is a walking mystery,” said Jim : “but he is a noble 
good fellow, though unhappily a frog-eater.” 

“ Ah ! but I believe Miss Thornton knows it.” 

“Very like,” said Jim, yawning. 

I told him all the conversation I overheard that evening. 

“ Are you sure she said ‘ the king ’ ? ” he asked. 

“ Quite sure,” I said ; “ now, what do you make of it ? ” 

“ I make this of it,” he said : “ that it is no earthly business of 
ours, or we should have been informed of it ; and if I were you 
I wouldn’t breathe a word of it to any mortal soul, or let the 
Doctor suspect that you overheard anything. Secrets where 
kings are concerned are precious sacred things, old Jeff. Good 
night ! ’ ’ 


CHAPTER XXII. 

SAM Buckley’s education. 

This nan-ative which I am now writing is neither more nor less 
than an account of what befel certain of my acquaintances during 
a period extending over nearly, or quite, twenty years, interspersed, 
and let us hope embellished, with descriptions of the country in 
which these circumstances took place, and illustrated by conver- 
sations well known to me by frequent repetition, selected as 
throwing light upon the characters of the persons concerned. 
Episodes there are, too, which I have thought it worth while to 
introduce, as being more or less interesting, as bearing on the 
manners of a country but little known, out of which materials it is 
difficult to select those most proper to make my tale coherent ; 
yet it has been my object, neither to dwell on the one hand 
unnecessarily on the more unimportant passages, nor on the other 
hand to omit anything which may be supposed to bear on the 
general course of events. 

Now, during all the time above mentioned, I, Geoffry Hamlyn, , 
have happened to lead a most uninteresting, and with few excep- 
tions prosperous existence. I was but little concerned, save as a 
hearer, in the catalogue of exciting accidents and offences which I 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


178 


chronicle. I have looked on with the deepest interest at the love- 
making, and ended a bachelor ; I have witnessed the fighting afar 
ofi*, only joining the battle when I could not help it, yet I am a 
steady old fogey, with a mortal horror of a disturbance of any sort. 
I have sat drinking with the wine-bihbers, and yet at sixty my 
hand is as steady as a rock. Money has come to me by mere 
accumulation ; I have taken more pains to spend it than to 
make it ; in short, all through my life’s dream, I have been a 
spectator and not an actor, and so in this story I shall keep my- 
self as much as possible in the background, only appearing 
personally when I cannot help it. 

Acting on this resolve I must now make my conge, and hid you 
farewell for a few years, and go hack to those few sheep which 
James Stockhridge and I own in the wilderness, and continue the 
history of those who are more important than myself. I must 
push on too, for there is a long period of dull stupid pros- 
perity coming to our friends at Baroona and Toonarhin, which we 
must get over as quickly as is decent. Little Sam Buckley also, 
though at present a most delightful child, will soon he a mere 
uninteresting boy. We must teach him to read and write, and 
ride, and what not, as soon as possible, and see if we can’t find a 
young lady — well, I won’t anticipate, hut go on. Go on, did I 
say ? — jump on, rather— two whole years at once. 

See'iBaroona now. Would you know it ? I think not. That 
hut where we spent the pleasant Christmas-day you know of is 
degraded into the kitchen, and seems moved backward, although 
it stands in the same place, for a new house is built nearer the 
river, quite overwhelming the old slab hut in its grandeur — a long 
low wooden house, with deep cool verandahs all round, already 
festooned with passion flowers, and young grape-vines, and fronted 
by a flower-garden, all a-blaze with petunias and geraniums. 

It was a summer evening, and all the French windows reaching 
to the ground were open to admit the cool south wind, which had 
just come up, deliciously icily cold after a scorching day. In the 
verandah sat the Major and the Doctor over their claret (for the 
Major had taken to dining late again now, to his great comfort), 
and in the garden were Mrs. Buckley and Sam watering the 
flowers, attended by a man who drew water from a new-made 
reservoir near the house. 

“I think. Doctor,” said the Major, “that the habit of dining 
in the middle of the day is a gross abuse of the gifts of Providence, 
and I’ll prove it to you. What does a man dine for ? — answer me 
that.” 

“To satisfy his hunger^ 1 should say,” answered the Doctor. 


174 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


‘‘ Pooh ! pooh ! stuff and nonsense, my good friend,” said the 
Major ; “you are speaking at random, I suppose you will say, 
then, that a black fellow is capable of dining ? ” 

“ Highly capable, as far as I can judge from what I have seen,” 
replied the Doctor. “A full-grown fighting black Avould he 
ashamed if he couldn’t eat a leg of mutton at a sitting.” 

“And you call that dining?” said the Major. “I call it 
gorging. Why, those fellows are more uncomfortable after food 
than before. I have seen them sitting close before the fire and 
rubbing their stomachs with mutton fat to reduce the swelling. 
Ha ! ha ! ha ! — dining, eh ? Oh, Lord ! ” 

“ Then if you don’t dine to satisfy your hunger, what the deuce 
do you eat dinners for at all ? ” asked the Doctor. 

“ Why,” said the Major, spreading his legs out before him with 
a benign smile, and leaning back in his chair, “ I eat my dinner, 
not so much for the sake of the dinner itself, as for the after- 
dinnerish feeling which follows : a feeling that you have nothing 
to do, and that if you had you’d be shot if you’d do it. That, to 
return to where I started from, is why I won’t dine in the middle 
of the day.” 

“ If that is the way you feel after dinner, I certainly wouldn’t.” 

“All the most amiable feelings in the human breast,” continued 
the Major, “ are brought out in their full perfection by dinner. If 
a fellow were to come to me now and ask me to lend him ten 
pounds, I’d do it, provided, you know, that he would fetch out the 
cheque-book and pen and ink.” 

“Laziness is nothing,” said the Doctor, “unless well carried 
out. I only contradicted you, however, to draw you out ; I agree 
entirely. Do you know, my friend, I am getting marvellously fond 
of this climate.” 

“So am I. But then you know. Doctor, that we are sheltered 
from the north wind here by the snow- ranges. The summer in 
Sydney, now, is perfectly infernal. The dust is so thick you can’t 
see your hand before you.” 

“^SoJ believe,” said the Doctor. “By the bye, I got a new 
butterfly to-day : rather an event, mind you, here, where there are 
so few.” 

“ What is he ? ” 

“ An Hipparchia,” said the Doctor, “ Sam saw him first and 
gave chase.” 

“ You seem to be making quite a naturalist of my boy. Doctor. 
I am sincerely obliged to you. If we can make him take to that 
sort of thing it may keep him out of much mischief.” 

“ He will never get into much,” said the Doctor, “ unless I 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


175 


am mistaken ; he is the most docile child I ever came across. It 
is a pleasure to he with him. What are you going to do with 
him ? ” 

“He must go to school, I am afraid,” said the Major with a 
sigh ; “I can’t bring my heart to part with him ; but his mother 
has taught him all she knows, so I suppose he must go to school, 
and fight, and get flogged, and come home with a pipe in his 
mouth, and an oath on his lips, with his education completed. I 
don’t fancy his staying here among these convict servants, when 
he is old enough to learn mischief.” 

“ He’ll learn as much mischief at a colonial school, I expect,” 
said the Doctor, “and more too. All the evil he hears from these 
fellows will be like the water on a duck’s back ; whereas, if you 
send him to school in a town, he’ll learn a dozen .vices he’ll never 
hear of here. Get him a tutor.” 

“ That's easier said than done. Doctor. It is very hard to get 
a respectable tutor in the colony.” 

“ Here is one at your hand,” said the Doctor. “ Take 
me.” 

“My dear friend,” said the Major, jumping up, “I would not 
have dared to ask such a thing. If you would undertake him for 
a short time ? ” 

“I will undertake the boy’s education altogether. Potztausend, 
and why not ! It will be a labour of love, and therefore the more 
thoroughly done. What shall he learn, now ? ” 

“ That I must leave to you.” 

“A weighty responsibility,” said the Doctor. “No Latin or 
Greek, I suppose ? They wiU be no use to him here.” 

“Well — no; I suppose not. But I should like him to learn 
his Latin grammar. You may depend upon it there’s something 
in the Latin grammar.” 

“ What use has it been to you. Major ? ” 

“ Why, the least advantage it has been to me is to give me an 
insight into the construction of languages, which is some use. 
But while I was learning the Latin grammar, I learnt other things 
besides, of more use than the construction of any languages, living 
or dead. First, I learnt that there were certain things in this world 
that must be done. Next, that there were people in this world, of 
whom the Masters of Eton were a sample, whose orders must be 
obeyed without question. Third, I found that it was pleasanter 
in all ways to do one’s duty than to leave it undone. And last, I 
found out how to bear a moderate amount of birching without any 
indecent outcry.” 

“ All very useful things,” said the Doctor. “ Teach a boy one 


176 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


thing well, and you show him how to learn others. History, I 
suppose?” 

“ As much as you like, Doctor. His mother has taught him 
his catechism, and all that sort of thing, and she is the fit person, 
you know. With the exception of that and the Latin grammar, I 
trust everything to your discretion.” 

“ There is one thing I leave to you, Major, if you please, and 
that is corporal chastisement. I am not at all sure that I could 
bring myself to flog Sam, and, if I did, it would be very inefficiently 
done.” 

“ Oh, ITl undertake it,” said the Major, “ though I believe I 
shall have an easy task. He won’t want much flogging.” 

At this moment Mrs. Buckley approached with a basketful of 
fresh-gathered flowers. “ The roses don’t flower well here. 
Doctor,” she said, “but the geraniums run mad. Here is a 
salmon-coloured one for your button-hole.” 

“ He has earned it well, Agnes,” said her husband. “ He has 
decided the discussion we had last night by oflering to undertake 
Sam’s education himself.” 

“And God’s blessing on him for it ! ” said Mrs. Buckley, warmly. 
“You have taken a great load ofif my mind. Doctor. I should 
never have been happy if that boy had gone to school. Come 
here, Sam.” 

Sam came bounding into the verandah, and clambered up on 
his father, as if he had been a tree. He was now eleven years 
old, and very tall and well-formed for his age. He was a good- 
looking boy, with regular features, and curly chestnut hair. He 
had, too, the large grey-blue eye of his father, an eye that never 
lost for a moment its staring expression of kindly honesty, and 
the lad’s whole countenance was one which, without being parti- 
cularly handsome, or even very intelligent, won an honest man’s 
regard at first sight. 

“ My dear Sam,” said his mother, “ leave oft* playing with your 
father’s hair, and listen to me, for I have something serious to say 
to you. Last night your father and I were debating about 
sending you to school, but Doctor Mulhaus has himself ofered to 
be your tutor, thereby giving you advantages, for love, which you 
never could have secured for money. Now, the least we can 
expect of you, my dear boy, is that you will be docile and attentive 
to him.” 

“ I will try, Doctor dear,” said Sam. “ But I am very stupid 
sometimes, you know.” 

So the good Doctor, whose head was stored with nearly as much 
of human knowledge as mortal head could hold, took simple, 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


177 


guileless little Sam by the hand, and led him into the garden of 
knowledge. Unless I am mistaken, these two will pick more 
flowers than they will dig potatoes in the aforesaid garden, but I 
don’t think that two such honest souls will gather much unwhole- 
some fruit. The danger is that they will waste their time, which 
is no danger at all, but a certainty. 

I believe that such an education as our Sam got from the Doctor 
would have made a slattern and 26 faineant out of half the boys in 
England. If Sam had been a clever boy, or a conceited boy, he 
would have ended with a superflcial knowledge of things in general, 
imagining he knew everyth ing when he knew nothing, and would 
have been left in the end, without a faith either religious or 
political, a useless, careless man. 

This danger the Doctor foresaw in the first month, and going 
to the Major abruptly, as he walked up and down the garden, took 
his arm, and said, — 

“ See here, Buckley. I have undertaken to educate that boy 
of yours, and every day I like the task better, and yet every day 
I see that I have undertaken something beyond me. His appetite 
for knowledge is insatiable, but he is not an intellectual boy ; he 
makes no deductions of his ovm, but takes mine for granted. He 
has no commentary on what he learns, but that of a dissatisfied 
idealist like me, a man who has been thrown among circumstances 
sufficiently favourable to make a prime minister out of some men, 
and yet who has ended by doing nothing. Another thing : this is 
my first attempt at education, and I have not the schoolmaster’s 
art to keep hun to details. Every day I make new resolutions, 
and every day I break them. The boy turns his great eyes upon 
me in the middle of some humdrum work, and asks me a question. 
In answering, I get off the turnpike road, and away we go from 
lane to lane, from one subject to another, until lesson-time is over, 
and nothing done. And, if it were merely time wasted, it could 
be made up, but he remembers every word I say, and believes in 
it like gospel, when I myself couldn’t remember half of it to save 
my life. Now, my dear fellow, I consider your boy to be a very 
sacred trust to me, and so I have mentioned all this to you, to 
give you an opportunity of removing him to where he might be 
under a stricter discipline, if you thought fit. If he was like 
some boys, now, I should resign my post at once ; but, as it is, I 
shall wait till you turn me out, for two reasons. The first is, that 
I take such delight in my task, that I do not care to relinquish it ; 
and the other is, that the lad is naturally so orderly and gentle, 
that he does not need discipline, like most boys.”^ 

“ My dear Doctor,” replied Major Buckley, “ listen to me. If 

13 


178 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


we were in England, and Sam could go to Eton, which, I take it, 
you know, is the best school in the world, I would still earnestly 
ask you to continue your work. He will probably inherit a great 
deal of money, and will not have to push his way in the world by 
his brains ; so that close scholarship will be rather unnecessary. 

I should like him to know history well and thoroughly ; for he 
may mix in the political life of this little colony by and by. Latin 
grammar, you know,” he said, laughing, “is indispensable. Doctor, 

I trust my boy with you because I know that you will make him a 
gentleman, as his mother, with God’s blessing, will make him a 
Christian.” 

So the Doctor buckled to his task again, with renewed energy ; 
to Euclid, Latin grammar, and fractions. Sam’s good memory 
enabled him to make light of the grammar, and the fractions too 
were no great difficulty, but the Euclid was an awful trial. He 
couldn’t make out what it was all about. He got on very well 
until he came nearly to the end of the first book, and then getting 
among the parallelogram “props,” as we used to call them (may 
their fathers’ graves be defiled !), he stuck dead. For a whole 
evening did he pore patiently over one of them till A B, setting to 
C D, crossed hands, poussetted, and whirled round “ in Sahara 
waltz ” through his tlirobbing head. Bed-time, but no rest ! 
Whether he slept or not he could not tell. Who could sleep with 
that long-bodied, ill-tempered-looking parallelogram A H standing 
on the bed-clothes, and crying out in tones loud enough to waken 
the house, that it never had been, nor ever would be equal to the 
fat jolly square C K ? So, in the morning, Sam woke to the 
consciousness that he was farther off from the solution than ever, 
but, having had a good cry, went into the study and tackled to it 
again. 

No good ! Breakfast time, and matters much worse ! That 
long peaked-nose vixen of a triangle A H C, which yesterday Sam 
had made out was equal to half the parallelogram and half the 
square, now had the audacity to declare that She had nothing to 
do with either of them ; so what was to be done now ? 

After breakfast Sam took his book and went out to his father, 
who was sitting smoking in the verandah. He clambered up on 
to his knee, and then began : — 

“Father, dear, see here; can you understand this? You’ve 
got to prove, you know, — oh, dear ! I’ve forgot that now.” 

“ Let’s see,” said the Major ; “ I’m afraid this is a little above 
me. There’s Brentwood, now, could do it; he was in the 
Artillery, you know, and learnt fortification, and that sort of 
thing. I don’t think I can make much hand of it, Sam.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


179 


But Sam had put his head upon his father’s shoulder, and was 
crying bitterly. 

“ Come, come, my old man,” said the Major, “ don’t give way, 
you know ; don’t he beat.” 

“I cant make it out at all,” said Sam, sobbing. “I’ve got 
such a buzzing in my head with it ! and if I can’t do it I must 
stop ; because I can’t go on to the next till I understand this. 
Oh, dear me ! ” 

your head there a little, my boy, till it gets clearer : then 
perhaps you will be able to make it out. You may depend on it 
that you ought to learn it, or the good Doctor wouldn’t have set it 
to you ; never let a thing heat you, my son.” 

^ So Sam cried on his father’s shoulder a little, and then went in 
with his book ; and not long after, the Doctor looked in un- 
perceived, and saw the hoy with his elbows on the table and the 
hook before him. Even while he looked a big tear fell plump into 
the middle of A H ; so the Doctor came quietly in and said, — 

“ Can’t you manage it, Sam ? ” 

Sam shook his head. 

“ Just give me hold of the hook ; will you, Sam ? ” 

Sam complied without word or comment ; the Doctor sent it 
flying through the open window, half-way down the garden. 
“ There ! ” said he, nodding his head, “ that’s the fit place for 
him this day : you’ve had enough of him at present ; go and tell 
one of the blacks to dig some worms, and we’U make holiday and 
go a fishing.” 

Sam looked at the Doctor, and then through the window at his 
old enemy lying in the middle of the flower-bed. He did not like 
to see the poor hook, so lately his master, crumpled and helpless, 
fallen from its high estate so suddenly. He would have gone to 
its assistance, and picked it up and smoothed it, the more so as 
he felt that he had been beaten. 

The Doctor seemed to see everything. “ Let it lie here, my 
child,” he said; “you are not in a position to assist a fallen 
enemy ; you are still the vanquished party. Go and get the 
worms.” 

He went, and when he came back he found the Doctor sitting 
beside his father in the verandah, with a penknife in one hand and 
the ace of spades in the othor. He cut the card into squares, tri- 
angles, and parallelograms, while Sam looked on, and, demonstra- 
ting as he went, fitted them one into the other, till the hoy saw 
his bugbear of a proposition made as clear as day before his eyes. 

“ Why,” said Sam, “ that’s as clear as need be. I understand 
it. Now may I pick the book up. Doctor ? ” 


180 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


History was the pleasantest part of all Sam’s tasks, for they would 
sit in the little room given up for a study, with the French 
windows open looking on the flower-garden, Sam reading aloud 
and the Doctor making discursive commentaries. At last, one 
day the Doctor said, — 

My hoy, we are making too much of a pleasure of this • you 
must really learn your dates. Now tell me the date of the 
accession of Edward the Sixth.” 

No returns. 

“Ah! I thought so: we must not be so discursive. We’ll 
learn the dates of the Grecian History, as being an efibrt of 
memory, you not having read it yet.” 

But this plan was rather worse than the other ; for one morning, 
Sam having innocently asked, at half-past eleven, what the battle 
of Thermopylae was, Mrs. Buckley coming in, at one, to call them 
to lunch, found the Doctor, who had begun the account of that 
glorious fight in English, and then gone on to German, walking up 
and down the room in a state of excitement, reciting to Sam, who 
did not know d from 4/, the soul-moving account of it from 
Herodotus in good sonorous Greek. She asked, laughing, 
“What language are you talking now, my dear Doctor?” 

“ Greek, madam, Greek I and the very best of Greek ! ” 

“ And what does Sam think of it? I should like you to learn 
Greek, my boy, if you can.” 

“ I thought he was singing, mother,” said Sam ; but after that 
the lad used to sit delighted, by the river side, when they were 
fishing, while the Doctor, with his musical voice, repeated some 
melodious ode of Pindar’s. 

And so the intellectual education proceeded, with more or less 
energy ; and meanwhile the physical and moral part was not 
forgotten, though the two latter, like the former, were not very 
closely attended to, and left a good deal to Providence. (And, 
having done your best for a boy, in what better hands can you 
leave him ?) But the Major, as an old soldier, had gained a 
certain faith in the usefulness of physical training ; so, when Sam 
was about twelve, you might have seen him any afternoon on the 
lawn with his father, the Major, patiently teaching him singlestick, 
and Sam as patiently learning, until the boy came to be so 
marvellously active on his legs, and to show such rapidity of eye 
and hand, that the Major, on one occasion, having received a more 
than usually agonising cut on the forearm, remarked that he 
thought he was not quite so active on his pins as formerly, and 
that he must hand the boy over to the Doctor. 

“ Doctor,” said he that day, “ I have taught my boy ordinary 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


181 


sword play, till, by Jove, sir, he is getting quicker than I am. 
I wish you would take him in hand and give him a little fencing.” 

“ Who told you I could fence ? ” said the Doctor. 

“ Why, I don’t know ; no one, I think. I have judged, I fancy, 
more by seeing you flourish your walking-stick than anything else. 
You are a fencer, are you not ? ” 

The Doctor laughed. He was in fact a consummate maitre 
d'armes; and Captain Brentwood, before spoken of, no mean 
fencer, coming to Baroona on a visit, found that our friend could 
do exactly as he liked with him, to the Captain’s great astonish- 
ment. And Sam soon improved under his tuition, not indeed to 
the extent of being a master of the weapon ; he was too large and 
loosely built for that ; but, at all events, so far as to gain an up- 
right and elastic carriage, and to learn the use of his limbs. 

The Major issued an edict, giving the most positive orders 
against its infringement, that Sam should never mount a horse 
without his special leave and licence. He taught him to ride, 
indeed, but would not give him much opportunity for practising it. 
Once or twice a-week he would take him out, but seldom oftener. 
Sam, who never dreamt of questioning the wisdom and excellence 
of any of his father’s decisions, rather wondered at this ; pondering 
in his own mind how it was that, while all the lads he knew 
around, now getting pretty numerous, lived, as it were, on horse- 
back, never walking a quarter of a mile on any occasion, he alone 
should be discouraged from it. “Perhaps,” he said to himself 
one day, “ he doesn’t want me to make many acquaintances. It 
is true, Charley Delisle smokes and swears, which is very un- 
gentlemanly ; but Cecil Mayford, Dad says, is a perfect little 
gentleman, and I ought to see as much of him as possible, and yet 
he wouldn’t give me a horse to go to their muster. Well, I 
suppose he has some reason for it.” 

One holiday the Doctor and the Major were sitting in the veran- 
dah after breakfast, when Sam entered to them, and, clambering 
on to his father as his wont was, said, — 

“ See here, father ! Harry is getting in some young beasts at 
the stock-yard hut, and Cecil Mayford is coming over to see if any 
of theirs are among them ; may I go out and meet him ? ” 

“ To be sure, my boy ; why not ? ” 

“ May I have Bronsewing, father? He is in the stable.” 

“ It is a nice cool day, and only four miles ; why not walk out, 
my boy?” 

Sam looked disappointed, but said nothing. 

“ I know all about it, my child,” said the Major ; “ Cecil will 
be there on Blackboy, and you would like to show him that 


182 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


Bronsewing is the superior pony of the two. That’s all very 
natural ; hut still I say, get your hat, Sam, and trot through the 
forest on your own two legs, and bring Cecil home to dinner.” 

Sam still looked disappointed, though he tried not to show it. 
He went and got his hat, and, meeting the dogs, got such a wild 
welcome from them that he forgot all about Bronsewing. Soon 
his father saw him merrily crossing the paddock with the whole 
kennel of the establishment. Kangaroo dogs, cattle dogs, and 
collies, barking joyously around him. 

“ There’s a good lesson manfully learnt. Doctor,” said the 
Major; “he has learnt to sacrifice his will to mine without 
argument, because he knows I have always a reason for things. 
I want that boy to ride as little as possible, but he has earned an 
exception in his favour to-day. — Jerry ! ” (After a few calls the 
stableman appeared.) “ Put Mr. Samuel’s saddle on Bronsewing, 
and mine on Ricochette, and bring them round.” 

So Sam, walking cheerily forward singing, under the light and 
shadow of the old forest, surrounded by his dogs, hears horses’ 
feet behind him, and looking back sees his father riding and 
leading Bronsewing saddled. 

“ Jump up, my boy,” said the Major ; “ Cecil shall see what 
Bronsewing is like, and how well you can sit him. The reason 
I altered my mind was that I might reward you for acting like 
a man, and not arguing. Now, I don’t want you to ride much 
yet for a few years. I don’t want my lad to grow up with a pair 
of how legs like a groom, and probably something worse, from 
living on horseback before his bones are set. You see I have 
good reason for what I do.” 

But I think that the lessons Sam liked best of all were the 
swimming lessons, and at a very early age he could swim and dive 
like a black, and once when disporting himself in the water, when 
not more than thirteen, poor Sam nearly had a stop put to his 
bathing for ever, and that in a very frightful manner. 

His father and he had gone down to bathe one hot noon ; the 
Major had swum out and was standing on the rock wiping himself, 
while Sam was still disporting in the mid-river ; as he watched 
the boy he saw what seemed a stick upon the water, and then, as 
he perceived the ripple around it the horrible truth burst on the 
affrighted father : it was a large black snake crossing the river, 
and poor little Sam was swimming straight towards it, all un- 
conscious of his danger. 

The Major cried out and waved his hand ; the boy seeing some- 
thing was wrong, turned and made for the shore,' and the next 
momexit his father, bending his body back, hurled himself through 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN, 


183 


the air and alighted in the water alongside of him, clutching him 
round the body, and heading down the river with furious strokes. 

“ Don’t cling, Sam, or get frightened ; make for the shore.” 

The lad, although terribly frightened at he knew not what, with 
infinite courage seconded his father’s efforts although he felt sink- 
ing. In a few minutes they were safe on the bank, in time for 
them to see the reptile land, and crawling up the bank disappear 
among the rocks. 

“ God has been very good to us, my son. You have been 
saved from a terrible death. Mind you don’t breathe a word to 
your mother about this.” 

That night Sam dreamt that he was in the coils of a snake, but 
waking up found that his father was laid beside him in his clothes 
with one arm round his neck, so he went to sleep again and 
thought no more of the snake. 

“ My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not ” — a saying 
which it is just possible you have heard before. I can tell you 
where it comes from : it is one of the apothegms of the king of a 
little eastern nation who at one time were settled in Syria, and 
whose writings are not much read now-a-days, in consequence of 
the vast mass of literature of a superior kind which this happy 
century has produced. I can recommend the book, however, as 
containing some original remarks, and being generally worth read- 
ing. The meaning of the above quotation (and the man who said 
it, mind you, had at one time a reputation for shrewdness), is, as 
I take it, that a man’s morals are very much influenced by the 
society he is thrown among ; and although in these parliamentary 
times we know that kings must of necessity be fools,- yet in this 
instance I think that the man shows some glimmerings of reason, 
for his remark tallies singularly with my own personal observa- 
tion ; so, acting on this, while I am giving you the history of this 
little wild boy of the bush, I cannot do better than give some 
account of the companions with whom he chiefly assorted out of 
school-hours. 

With broad intelligent forehead, with large loving hazel eyes, 
with a frill like Queen Elizabeth, with a brush like a fox ; deep in 
the brisket, perfect in markings of black, white, and tan ; in 
sagacity a Pitt, in courage an Anglesey, Rover stands first on my 
list, and claims to be king of Collie-dogs. In politics I should 
say Conservative of the high Protectionist sort. Let us have no 
strange dogs about the place to grub up sacred bones, or we will 
shake out our frills and tumble them in the dust. Domestic cats 
may mioul in the garden at night to a certain extent, but a line 
must be dra^vn ; after that they must be chased up trees and 


184 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


barked at, if necessary, all night. Opossums and native cats are 
unfit to cumber the earth, and must be hunted into holes, 
wherever possible. Cows and other horned animals must not 
come into the yard, or even look over the garden fence, under 
penalties. Black fellows must be barked at, and their dogs 
chased to the uttermost limits of the habitable globe. Such were 
the chief points of the creed subscribed to by Sam’s dog Rover. 

All the love that may be between dog and man, and man and 
dog, existed between Sam and Rover. Never a fresh cheery 
morning when the boy arose with the consciousness of another 
happy day before him, but that the dog was waiting for him as he 
stepped from his window into clear morning air. Never a walk in 
the forest, but that Rover was his merry companion. And what 
would lessons have been without Rover looking in now and then 
with his head on one side, and his ears cocked, to know' when he 
would be finished and come out to play ? 

Oh, memorable day, when Sam got separated from his father in 
Yass, and, looking back, saw a cloud of dust in the road, and 
dimly descried Rover, fighting valiantly against fearful odds, with 
all the dogs in the township upon him ! He rode back, and 
prayed for assistance from the men lounging in front of the public- 
house ; who, pitying his distress, pulled off all the dogs till there 
were only left Rover and a great white bulldog to do battle. The 
fight seemed going against Sam’s dog ; for the bulldog had him 
by the neck, and held him firm, so that he could do nothing. 
Nevertheless, mind yourself, master bulldog ; you’ve only got a 
mouthful of long hair there ; and when you do let go, I think, 
there is danger for you in those fierce gleaming eyes, and terrible 
grinning fangs. 

Sam was crying ; and the men round were saying, “ Oh ! take 
the bulldog off ; the collie’s no good to him,” — when a man sud- 
denly appeared at Sam’s side, and called out, 

“ I’ll back the collie for five pounds, and here’s my money ! ” 

Half-a-dozen five pound notes were ready for him at once ; and 
he had barely got the stakes posted before the event proved he was 
right. In an evil moment for him the bulldog loosed his hold, 
and, ere he had time to turn round. Rover had seized him below 
the eye, and was dragging him about the road, worrying him as 
he would an opossum : so the discomfited owner had to remove 
his bulldog to save his life. Rover, after showing his teeth and 
shaking himself, came to Sam as fresh as a daisy ; and the new 
comer pocketed his five pounds. 

“I am so much obliged to you,” said Sam, turning to him, 
“ for taking my dog’s part ! They were all against me.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


185 


“ T m much obliged to your dog, sir, for winning me five pounds 
so easy. ^ But there ain’t a many had dogs or had men either, 
about Major Buckley’s house.” 

“ Then you know us ? ” said Sam. 

“ Ought to it, sir. An old Devonshire man. Mr. Hamlyn’s 
stud-groom, sir — Dick.” 

Well, as I am going to write Rover’s life, in three volumes post 
octavo, I won’t any further entrench on my subject matter, save to 
say that, while on the subject of Sam’s education, I could not well 
omit a notice of the aforesaid Rover. For I think all a man can 
learn from a dog, Sam learnt from him ; and that is something. 
Now let us go on to the next of his notable acquaintances. 

Who is this glorious, blue -eyed, curly-headed hoy, who hursts 
into the house like a whirlwind, making it ring again with merry 
laughter ? This is Jim Brentwood, of whom we shall see much 
anon. 

At Waterloo, when the French cavalry were coming up the hill, 
and our artillerymen were running for the squares, deftly trundling 
their gun-wheels before them, it happened that there came running 
towards the square where Major Buckley stood like a tower of 
strength (the tallest man in the regiment), an artillery officer, 
begrimed with mud and gunpowder, and dragging a youth by the 
collar, or rather, what seemed to be the body of a youth. Some 
cried out to him to let go ; but he looked back, seeming to measure 
the distance between the cavalry and the square, and then, never 
loosing his hold, held on against hope. Every one thought he 
would be too late ; when some one ran out of the square (men said 
it was Buckley), and, throwing the wounded lad over his shoulder, 
ran with him into safety ; and a cheer ran along the line from 
those who saw him do it. Small time for cheering then ; for 
neither could recover his breath before there came a volley of 
musketry, and all around them, outside the bayonets, was a wild 
sea of fierce men’s faces, horses’ heads, gleaming steel, and 
French blasphemy. A strange scene for the commencement of an 
acquaintance ! And yet it throve ; for that same evening, Buckley, 
talking to his Colonel, saw the artillery officer coming towards 
them, and asked who he might be ? 

‘‘ That,” said the Colonel, “ is Brentwood of the Artillery, who 
ran away with Lady Kate Bingley, and they haven’t a rap to bless 
themselves with, sir. It was her brother that you and he fetched 
into the square to-day.” 

And so began a friendship which lasted the lives of both men ; 
and, I doubt not, will last their sons’ lives too. For Brentwood 
lived within thirty miles of the Major, and their sons spent much 


186 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


of their time together, having such a friendship for one another 
as only hoys can have. 

Captain Brentwood’s son Jim was a very different hoy to Sam, 
though a very fine fellow too. Mischief and laughter were the 
apparent objects of his life ; and when the Doctor saw him ap- 
proaching the house, he used to put away Sam’s lesson-books with 
a sigh and wait for better times. The Captain had himself under- 
taken his son’s education, and, being a somewhat dreamy man, 
excessively attached to mathematics, Jim had got, altogether, a 
very remarkable education indeed ; which, however, is hardly to 
our purpose just now. Brentwood, I must say, was a widower, 
and a kind-hearted easy-going man ; he had, besides, a daughter, 
who was away at school. Enough of them at present. 

The next of Sam’s companions who takes an important part in 
this history is Cecil Mayford — a delicate, clever little dandy, and 
courageous withal ; with more brains in his head, I should say, 
than Sam and Jim could muster between them. His mother was 
a widow, who owned the station next down the river from the 
Buckleys’, distant about five miles, and which, since the death of 
her husband. Doctor Mayford, she had managed with the assist- 
ance of an overseer. She had, beside Cecil, a little daughter of 
great beauty. 

Also, I must here mention that the next station below Mrs. 
Mayford’ s, on the river, distant by the windings of the valley 
fifteen miles, and yet, in consequence of a bend, scarcely ten from 
Major Buckley’s at Baroona, was owned and inhabited by Yahoos 
(by name Donovan), with whom we had nothing to do. But this 
aforesaid station, which is called Garoopna, will shortly fall into 
other hands, when you will see that many events of deep impor- 
tance will take place there, and many pleasant hours spent there 
by all our friends, more particularly one — by name Sam. 

There is one other left of whom I must say something here, 
and more immediately. The poor, puling little babe, bom in 
misery and disaster, Mary Hawker’s boy Charles ! 

Toonarbin was but a short ten miles from Baroona, and, of 
course, the two families were as one. There was always a 
hostage from the one house staying as a visitor in the other ; and, 
under such circumstances, of course, Charles and Sam were much 
together, and, as time went on, got to be firm friends. 

Charles was two years younger than Sam ; the smallest of all 
the lads, and perhaps the most unhappy. For the truth must be 
told ; he was morose and uncertain in his temper ; and although 
all the other boys bore with him most generously, as one of whom 
they had heard that he was born under some great misfortune, yet 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


187 


he was hardly a favourite amongst them ; and the poor boy, some- 
times perceiving this, would withdraw from his play, and sulk 
alone, resisting all the sober, kind inducements of Sam, and the 
merry, impetuous persuasions of Jim, to return. 

But he was a kind, good-hearted hoy, nevertheless. His temper 
was not under control ; hut, after one of his fierce, volcanic hursts 
of ill-humour, he would he acutely miserable and angry with him- 
self for days, particularly if the object of it had been Jim or Sam, 
his two especial favourites. On one occasion, after a causeless fit 
of anger with Jim, while the three were at Major Buckley’s 
together, he got his pony and rode away home secretly, speaking 
to no one. The other two lamented all the afternoon that he had 
taken the matter so seriously, and were debating even next 
morning going after him to propitiate him, when Charles reappeared, 
having apparently quite recovered his temper, but evidently bent 
upon something. 

He had a bird, a white corrella, which could talk and whistle 
surprisingly, probably, in fact, the most precious thing he owned. 
This prodigy he had now brought back in his basket as a peace- 
offering, and refused to be comforted, unless Jim accepted it as a 
present. 

“ But see, Charley,” said Jim, “ I was as much in the wrong 
as you were ” (which was not fact, for Jim was perfectly innocent). 
“ I wouldn’t take your bird for the world.” 

But Charles said that his mother approved of it, and if Jim 
didn’t take it he’d let it fly. 

“ Well, if you will, old fellow,” said Jim, “ I’ll tell you what I 
would rather have. Give me Fly’s dun pup instead, and take the 
bird home.” 

So this was negotiated after a time, and the corrella was taken 
back to Toonarbin, wildly excited by the journey, and calling for 
strong liquor all the way home. 

Those who knew the sad circumstances of poor Charles’s birth 
(the Major, the Doctor, and Mrs. Buckley) treated him with such 
kindness and consideration that they won his confidence and love. 
In any of his Berserk fits, if his mother were not at hand, he would 
go to Mrs. Buckley and open his griefs ; and her motherly tact and 
kindness seldom failed to still the wild beatings of that poor, sen- 
sitive, silly little heart, so that in time he grew to love her as only 
second to his mother. 

Such is my brief and imperfect, and I fear tedious account of 
Sam’s education, and of the companions with whom he lived, until 
the boy had grown into a young man, and his sixteenth birthday 
came round, on which day, as had been arranged, he was considered 


188 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


to have finished his education, and stand up, young as he was, as 
a man. 

Happy morning, and memorable for one thing at least — that his 
father, coming into his bedroom and kissing his forehead, led him 
out to the front door, where was a groom holding a horse handsomer 
than any Sam had seen before, which pawed the gravel impatient 
to be ridden, and ere Sam had exhausted half his expressions of 
wonder and admiration — that his father told him the horse was his, 
a birthday-present from his mother. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

TOONARBIN. 

“ But,” I think I hear you say, “ what has become of Mary Hawker 
all this time ? You raised our interest about her somewhat, at first, 
as a young and beautiful woman, villain-beguiled, who seemed, too, 
to have a temper of her own, and promised, under circumstances, 
to turn out a bit of a b — mst — ne. What is she doing all this time ? 
Has she got fat, or had the small-pox, that you neglect her like 
this ? We had rather more than we wanted of her and her 
villainous husband in the first part of this volume ; and now nothing. 
Let us, at all events, hear if she is dead or alive. And her husband, 
too, — although we hope, under Providence, that he has left this 
wicked world, yet we should be glad to hear of it for certain. 
Make inquiries, and let us know the result. Likewise, be so good 
as to inform us, how is Miss Thornton ? ” 

To all this I answer humbly, that I will do my best. If you will 
bring a dull chapter on you, duller even than all the rest, at least 
read it, and exonerate me. The fact is, my dear sir, that women 
like Mary Hawker are not particularly interesting in the piping 
times of peace. In volcanic and explosive times they, with their 
wild animal passions, become tragical and remarkable, like 
baronesses of old. But in tranquil times, as I said, they fall into 
the background, and show us the value and excellence of such 
placid, noble helpmates, as the serene, high-bred Mrs. Buckley. 

A creek joined the river about a mile below the Buckleys’ 
station, falling into the main stream with rather a pretty cascade, 
which even at the end of the hottest summer poured a tiny silver 
thread across the black rocks. Above the cascade the creek cut 
deep into the table land, making a charming glen, with precipitous 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


189 


bluestone walls, some eighty or ninety feet in height, fringed with 
black wattle and lightwood, and here and there, among the fallen 
rocks nearest the water, a fern tree or so, which last I may say are 
no longer there. Dr. Mulhaus having cut the hearts out of them 
and eaten them for cabbage. Should you wander up this little 
gully on a hot summer’s day, you would be chaimed with the 
beauty of the scenery, and the shady coolness of the spot ; till 
coming upon a black snake coiled away among the rocks, like a 
rope on the deck of a man of war, you would probably withdraw, 
not without a strong inclination to “ shy ” at every black stick you 
saw for the rest of the day. For this lower part of the Moira 
creek was, I am sorry to say, the most troubled locality for 
snakes, diamond, black, carpet, and other, which I ever happened 
to see. 

But following this creek you would find that the banks got rapidly 
less precipitous, and at length it swept in long curves through open 
forest glades, spreading, too, into deep dark water-holes, only con- 
nected by gravelly fords, with a slender stream of clear water run- 
ning across the yellow pebbles. These water-holes were the haunts 
of the platypus and the tortoise. Here, too, were flocks of black 
duck and teal, and as you rode past, the merry little snipe would 
rise from the water’s edge, and whisk away like lightning through 
the trees. Altogether, a pleasant woodland creek, alongside of 
which, under the mighty box-trees, ran a sandy road, bordered 
with deep beds of bracken fern, which led from Baroona of the 
Buckleys to Toonarhin of the Hawkers. 

A pleasant road, indeed, winding through the old forest straight 
towards the mountains, shifting its course so often that every 
minute some new vista opened upon you, till at length you came 
suddenly upon a clear space, beyond which rose a picturesque little 
granite cap, at the foot of which you saw a charming house, 
covered with green creepers, and backed by huts, sheepyards, a 
woolshed, and the usual concomitants of a flourishing Australian 
sheep station. Behind all again towered lofty, dark hanging 
woods, closing the prospect. 

This is Toonarhin, where Mary Hawker, with her leal and trusty 
cousin Tom Troubridge for partner, has pitched her tent, after all 
her spasmodic, tragical troubles, and here she is leading as happy, 
and by consequence as uninteresting, an existence as ever fell to 
the lot of a handsome woman yet. 

Mary and Miss Thornton had stayed with the Buckleys until 
good cousin Tom had got a house ready to receive them, and then 
they moved up and took possession. Mary and Tom were from the 
first co-partners, and latterly, Miss Thornton had invested her 


190 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


money, about £2,000, in the station. Matters were very prosperous 
and, after a few years, Tom began to get weighty and didactic in 
his speech, and to think of turning his attention to politics. 

To Mary the past seemed like a dream — as an old dream, well- 
nigh forgotten. The scene was so changed that at times she could 
hardly believe that all those dark old days were real. Could she, 
now so busy and happy, be the same woman who sat worn and 
frightened over the dying fire with poor Captain Saxon ? Is she 
the same woman whose husband was hurried off one wild night, 
and transported for coining ? Or is all that a hideous 
imagination ? 

No. Here is the pledge and proof that it is all too terribly real. 
This boy, whom she loves so wildly and fiercely, is that man’s son, 
and his father, for aught she knows, is alive, and only a few poor 
hundred miles off. Never mind ; let it be forgotten as though it 
never was. So she forgot it, and was happy. 

But not always. Sometimes she could not but remember what 
she was, in spite of the many kind friends who surrounded her, and 
the new and busy life she led. Then would come a fit of despon- 
dency, almost of despair, but the natural elasticity of her temper 
soon dispersed these clouds, and she was her old self again. 

Her very old self, indeed. That delicate-minded, intellectual 
old maid. Miss Thornton, used to remark with silent horror on 
what she called Mary’s levity of behaviour with men, but more 
especially with honest Tom Troubridge. Many a time, when the 
old lady was sitting darning (she was always darning ; she used to 
begin darning the things before they were a week out of the draper’s 
shop), would her tears fall upon her work, as she saw Mary sitting 
with her child in her lap, smiling, while the audacious Tom twisted 
a flower in her hair, in the way that pleased him best. To see 
anything wrong, and to say nothing, was a thing impossible. She 
knew that speaking to Mary would only raise a storm, and so, 
knowing the man she had to deal with, she determined to speak 
to Tom. 

She was not long without her opportunity. Duly darning one 
evening, while Mary was away putting her boy to bed, Tom entered 
from his wine. Him, with a combination of valour and judgment, 
she immediately attacked, acting upon a rule once laid down to 
Mary — “ My dear, if you want to manage a man, speak to him 
after dinner.” 

“ Mr. Troubridge,” said Miss Thornton. “ May I speak a few 
words to you on private affairs ? ” 

“ Madam,” said Tom, drawing up a chair, “ I am at your service 
night or day.” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


191 


A younger woman,” said Miss Thornton, “might feel some 
delicacy in saying what I am going to say. But old age has its 
privileges, and so I hope to be forgiven.” 

“ Dear Miss Thornton,” said Tom, “ You must be going to say 
something very extraordinary if it requires forgiveness from me.” 

“Nay, my dear kinsman,” said Miss Thornton ; “ if we begin 
exchanging compliments, we shall talk all night, and never get to 
the gist of the matter after all. Here is what I want to say. It 
seems to me that your attentions to our poor Mary are somewhat 
more than cousinly, and it behoves me to remind you that she is 
stiU a married woman. Is that too blunt ? Have I offended 
you ? ” 

“ Nay — no,” said Tom ; “ you could never offend me. I think 
you are right too. It shall be amended, madam.” 

And after this Mary missed many delicate little attentions that 
Tom had been used to pay her. She thought he was sulky on 
some account at first, but soon her good sense showed her that, 
if they two were to live together, she must be more circumspect, or 
mischief would come. 

I’or, after all, Tom had but small place in her heart. Heart 
filled almost exclusively with this poor sulky little lad of hers, who 
seemed bom to trouble, as the sparks went upward. In teething 
even, aggravating beyond experience, and afterwards suffering from 
the whole list of juvenile evils in such a way as boy never did 
before ; coming out of these troubles too, with a captious, dis- 
agreeable temper, jealous in the extreme, — not a member who, on 
the whole, adds much to the pleasure of the little household, — yet 
with the blindest love towards some folks. Instance his mother, 
Thomas Troubridge, and Sam Buckley. 

For these three the lad had a wild hysterical affection, and yet 
none of them had much power over him. Once by one uncon- 
sidered word arouse the boy’s obstinacy, and all chance of con- 
trolling him was gone. Then, your only chance was to call in 
Miss Thornton, who had a way of managing the boy, more potent 
than Mary’s- hysterics, and Tom’s indignant remonstrances, or 
Sam’s quiet persuasions. 

For instance, — once, when he was about ten years old, his 
mother set him to learn some lesson or another, when he had been 
petitioning to go off somewhere with the men. He was furiously 
naughty, and threw the book to the other end of the room, all the 
threats and scoldings of his mother proving insufiicient to make 
him pick it up again. So that at last she went out, leaving him 
alone, triumphant, with Miss Thornton, who said^ not a word, but 
only raised her eyes off her work, from time to time, to look re- 


192 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 


proachfully on the rebellious boy. He could stand bis mother’s 
anger, but he could not stand those steady wondering looks that 
came from under the old lady’s spectacles. So that, when Mary 
came in again, she found the book picked up, and the lesson learned. 
Moreover, it was a fortnight before the lad misbehaved himself 
again. 

In sickness and in health, in summer and in winter, for ten long 
years after they settled at Toonarbin, did this noble old lady stand 
beside Mary as a rock of refuge in all troubles, great or small. 
Always serene, patient, and sensible, even to the last ; for the time 
came when this true and faithful servant was removed from among 
them to receive her reward. 

One morning she confessed herself unable to leave her bed ; that 
was the first notice they had. Doctor Mayford, sent for secretly, 
visited her. “Break up of the constitution,” said he, — “no 
organic disease,” — but shook his head. “ She will go,” he added, 
“with the first frost. lean do nothing.” And Dr. Mulhaus, 
being consulted, said he was but an amateur doctor, but con- 
curred with Dr. Mayford. So there was nothing to do but to wait 
for the end as patiently as might be. 

During the summer she got out of bed, and sat in a chair, 
which Tom used to lift dexterously into the verandah. There she 
would sit very quietly; sometimes getting Mrs. Buckley, who 
came and lived at Toonarbin that summer, to read a hymn for 
her ; and, during this time, she told them where she would like to 
be buried. 

On a little knoll, she said, which lay to the right of the house, 
barely two hundred yards from the window. Here the grass grew 
shorter and closer than elsewhere, and here freshened more rapidly 
beneath the autumn rains. Here, on winter’s evenings, the slant- 
ing sunbeams lingered longest, and here, at such times, she had 
been accustomed to saunter, listening to the sighing of the wind, 
in the dark funeral sheoaks and cypresses, like the far-off sea upon 
a sandy shore. Here, too, came oftener than elsewhere a flock 
of lories, making the dark low trees gay with flying .living blos- 
soms. And here she would lie with her feet towards the east, her 
sightless eyes towards that dreary ocean which she would never 
cross again. 

One fresh spring morning she sat up and talked serenely to Mrs. 
Buckley, about matters far higher and more sacred than one likes 
to deal with in a tale of this kind, and, after a time, expressed a 
wish for a blossom of a great amaryllis which grew just in front of 
her window. 

Mrs. Buckley got the flower for her ; and so, holding the criin- 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


193 


son-striped lily in her delicate, wasted fingers, the good old lady 
passed from this world without a struggle, as decently and as 
quietly as she had always lived in it. 

* -if 

This happened when Charles was about ten years old, and, for 
some time, the lad was subdued and sad. He used to look out of 
the window at night towards the grave, and wonder why they had 
put her they all loved so well, to lie out there under the wild- 
sweeping winter rain. But, by degrees, he got used to the little 
square white railing on the sheoak knoll, and, ere half a year was 
gone, the memory of his aunt had become very dim and in- 
distinct. 

Poor Mary, too, though a long while prepared for it, was very 
deeply and sincerely grieved at Miss Thornton’s death ; hut she 
soon recovered from it. It came in the course of nature, and, 
although the house looked blank and dull for a time, yet there 
was too much life all around her, too much youthful happy life, to 
make it possible to dwell very long on the death of one who had 
left them full of years and honour. But Lord Frederick (before 
spoken of incidentally in this narrative), playing billiards at 
Gibraltar, about a year after this, had put into his hand a letter, 
from which, when opened, there fell a lock of silver grey hair on 
the green cloth, which he carefully picked up, and, leaving his 
game, went home to his quarters. His comrades thought it was 
his father who was dead, and when they heard it was only his 
sister’s old governess, they wondered exceedingly; “for Fred,” 
said they, “ is not given to be sentimental.” 

And now, in a year or two, it began to he very difficult to keep 
Master Charley in order. When he was about thirteen, there was 
a regular gueriUa-war between him and his mother, on the subject 
of learning, which ended, ultimately, in the hoy flatly refusing to 
learn anything. His natural capacities were hut small, and, under 
any circumstances, knowledge would only have been acquired by 
him with infinite pains. But, as it was, with his selfishness 
fostered so excessively by his mother’s indulgence, and Tom’s 
good-humoured carelessness, it became totally impossible to teach 
him anything. In vain his mother scolded and wept, in vain Tom 
represented to him the beauties and excellences of learning — learn 
the hoy would not ; so that at fourteen he was given up in despair 
by his mother, having learnt nearly enough of reading, writing, and 
ciphering, to carry on the most ordinary business of life, — a most 
lamentable state of things for a lad who, in after life, would he a 
rich man, and who, in a young and rapidly-rising country, might 
become, by the help of education, politically influential. 

14 = 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


194 

I think that when Samuel Buckley and James Brentwood were 
gro'wn to be young men of eighteen or nineteen, and he was about 
seventeen or so, a stranger would have seen a great deal of dif- 
ference between the two former and the latter, and would, probably, 
have remarked that James and Sam spoke and behaved like two 
gentlemen, but that Charles did not, but seemed as though he had 
come from a lower grade in society, — with some truth too, for there 
was a circumstance in his bringing up which brought him more 
harm than all his neglect of learning, and all his mother’s foolish 
indulgences. 

Both Major Buckley and Captain Brentwood made it a law of 
the Medes and Persians, that neither of their sons should hold any 
conversation with the convict servants, save in the presence of 
competent authorities ; and, indeed, they both, as soon as 
increased emigration enabled them, removed their old household 
servants, and replaced them by free men, newly arrived : a lazy 
independent class, certainly, with exaggerated notions of their own 
importance in this new phase of their life, but without the worse 
vices of the convicts. This rule, even in such well-regulated 
households, was a very hard one to get observed, even under 
flogging penalties ; and, indeed, formed the staple affliction of 
poor thoughtless Jim’s early life, as this little anecdote will 
show : — 

One day going to see Captain Brentwood, when Jim was about 
ten years old, I met that young gentleman (looking, I thought, a 
little out of sorts) about two hundred yards from the house. He 
turned with me to go hack, and, after the first salutations, I 
said, — 

Well, Jim, my boy, I hope you’ve been good since I saw you 
last ? ” 

“ Oh dear, no,” was the answer, with a shake of the head that 
meant volumes. 

“ I’m sorry to hear that ; what is the matter ? ” 

“ I’ve been catching it,” said Jim, in a whisper, coming close 
alongside of me. “ A tea-stick as thick as my forefinger all over.” 
— Here he entered into particulars, which, however harmless in 
themselves, were not of a sort usually w'ritten in books. 

“ That’s a bad job,” I said ; “ what was it for ? ” . 

“ Why, I slipped ofi* with Jerry to look after some colts on the 
black swamp, and was gone all the afternoon ; and so Dad missed 
me ; and when I got home didn’t ! catch it ! Oh Lord, I’m all 
over blue wales ; but that ain’t the worst.” 

“ What’s the next misfortune ? ” I inquired. 

“ Why, when he got hold of me he said, ‘ Is this the first time 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


195 


you have been away with Jerry, sir ? ’ and I said ‘ Yes ’ (which 
was the awfullest lie ever you heard, for I went over to Barker’s 
with him two days before) ; then he said, ‘ Well, I must believe 
you it you say so. I shall not disgrace you by making inquiries 
among the men ; ’ and then he gave it me for going that time, and 
since then I’ve felt like Cain and Abel for telling him such a lie. 
What would you do — eh ? ” 

“ I should tell him all about it,” I said. 

“ Ah, hut then I shall catch it again, don’t you see ! Hadn’t I 
better wait till these wales are gone down ? ” 

“ I wouldn’t, if I were you,” I answered ; “I’d tell him at once.” 

“ I wonder why he is so particular,” said Jim ; “the Delisles 
and the Donovans spend as much of their time in the huts as they 
do in the house.” 

“And fine young blackguards they’ll turn out,” I said; in 
which I was right in those two instances. And although I have 
seen young fellows brought up among convicts who have turned 
out respectable in the end, yet it is not a promising school for 
good citizens. 

But at Toonarbin no such precautions as these were taken with 
regard to Charles. Tom was too careless, and Mary too indulgent. 
It was hard enough to restrain the hoy during the lesson hours, 
falsely so called. After that he was allowed to go where he liked, 
and even his mother sometimes felt relieved by his absence ; so 
that he was continually in the men’s huts, listening to their yarns 
— sometimes harmless bush adventures, sometimes, perhaps, ribald 
stories which he could not understand ; but one day Tom Trou- 
bridge coming by the hut looked in quietly, and saw Master 
Charles smoking a black pipe (he was not more than fourteen), 
and heard such a conversation going on that he advanced suddenly 
upon them, and ordered the boy home in a sterner tone than he 
had ever used to him before, and looked out of the door till he had 
disappeared. Then he turned round to the men. 

There were three of them, all convicts, one of whom, the one he 
had heard talking when he came in, was a large, desperate -looking 
fellow. When these men mean to deprecate your anger^ I have 
remarked they always look you blankly in the face ; but if they 
mean to defy you and he impudent, they never look at you, but 
always begin fumbling and fidgetting with something. So when 
Tom saw that the big man before mentioned (Daniel Harvey by 
name) was stooping down before the fire, he knew he was going to 
have a row, and waited. 

“ So boss,” began the ruffian, not looking at him, “ we ain’t fit 
company for the likes of that kinchin, — eh ? ” 


196 


THE EECOLLECTIONS. OP 


“ You’re not fit company for any man except the hangman/’ 
said Tom, looking more like six-foot-six than six-foot-three. 

‘‘ Oh my colonial oath ! ” said the other ; ‘‘ oh my 

‘ cabbage tree ! ’ So there’s going to be a coil about that scrubby 
little myrnonger ; eh ? Don’t you fret your bingy,"' boss ; he’ll 
he as good a man as his father yet.” 

For an instant a dark shadow passed over Tom’s face. 

“So,” he thought, “these fellows know all about George 
Hawker, eh ? Well, never mind ; what odds if they do ? ” And 
then he said aloud, turning round on Harvey, “ Look you here, 
you dog ; if I ever hear of your talking in that style before that 
boy, or any other boy, by George I’ll twist your head ofi‘! ” 

He advanced towards him, as if to perform that feat on the spot; 
in a moment the convict had snatched his knife from his belt and 
rushed upon him. 

Very suddenly indeed ; but not quite quick enough to take the 
champion of Devon by surprise. Ere he was well within reach 
Tom had seized the hand that held the knife, and with a backward 
kick of his left foot sent the embryo assassin sprawling on his back 
on the top of the fire, whence Tom dragged him by his heels, far 
more astonished than burnt. The other two men had, meanwhile, 
sat taking no notice, or seeming to take none, of the disturbance. 
Now, however, one of them spoke, and said, — 

“ I’m sure, sir, you didn’t hear me say nothing wrong to the 
young gent,” and so on, in a whining tone, till Tom cut him short 
by saying that, “ if he had any more nonsense among them, he 
would send ’em all three over to Captain Desborough, to the tune 
of fifty (lashes) a-piece.” 

After this little emeute Charles did not dare to go into the huts, 
and soon after these three men were exchanged. But there 
remained one man whose conversation and teaching, though not, 
perhaps, so openly outrageously villainous as that of the worthy 
Harvey, still had a very unfortunate efiect on his character. 

This was a rather small, wiry, active man, by name Jackson, a 
native, colonially convicted,! very clever among horses, a capital 
light-weight boxer, and in running superb, a pupil and ijrotege of 
the immortal “ flying pieman,” I (May his shadow never be less !) 
a capital cricketer, and a supreme humbug. This man, by his 
various accomplishments and great tact, had won a high place in 

* As a specimen of colonial slang the above is not in the least exag- 
gerated. 

t A man born in the colony, of European parents, convicted of some 
crime committed in the colony, 

; A great Australian pedestrian ; now, I believe, gathered to his fathers. 


GEOFFRY HAMLTN. 


197 


Tom Tronbridge’s estimation, and was put in a place of trust 
among the horses ; consequently having continual access to 
Charles, to whom he made himself highly agreeable, as being heir 
to the property ; giving him such insights into the worst side of 
sporting life, and such truthful accounts of low life in Sydney, as 
would have gone far to corrupt a lad of far stronger moral prin- 
ciple than he. 

And so, between this teaching of evil and neglect of good, Mary 
Hawker’s boy did not grow up all that might be desired. And at 
seventeen, I am sorry to say, he got into a most disreputable con- 
nexion with a Highland girl, at one of the Donovans’ out-station 
huts ; which caused his kindly guardian, Tom Troubridge, a great 
deal of vexation, and his mother the deepest grief, which was much 
increased at the same time by something I will relate in the next 
chapter. 

So sixteen years rolled peacefully away, chequered by such 
trifling lights and shadows as I have spoken of. The new gene- 
ration, the children of those whom we knew at first, are now 
ready to take their places, and bear themselves with more or less 
credit in what may be going on. And now comes a period which 
in the memory of all those whom I have introduced to you ranks 
as the most important of their lives. To me, looking back upon 
nearly sixty years of memory, the events which are coming stand 
out from the rest of my quiet life, well defined and remarkable, 
above all others. As looking on our western moors, one sees the 
long straight sky-line, broken only once in many miles by some 
fantastic Tor. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

IN WHICH MARY HAWKER LOSES ONE OF HER OLDEST 
SWEETHEARTS. 

Sixteen years of peace and plenty had rolled over the heads of 
James Stockbridge and myself, and we had grown to be rich. Our 
agent used to rub his hands, and bow, whenever our high mighti- 
nesses visited town. There was money in the bank, there was 
claret in the cellar, there were race-horses in the paddock ; in 
short, we were wealthy prosperous men — James a magistrate. 

November set in burning hot, and by the tenth the grass was as 
dry as stubble ; still we hoped for a thunder-storm and a few days’ 


198 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


rain, but none came. December wore wearily on, and by Christ- 
mas the smaller creeks, except those which were snow-fed, were 
reduced to a few muddy pools, and vast quantities of cattle were 
congregated within easy reach of the river, from other people’s 
runs, miles away. 

Of course, feed began to get very scarce, yet we were hardly so 
bad ofi‘ yet as our neighbours, for we had just parted with every 
beast we could spare, at high prices, to Port Phillip, and were only 
waiting for the first rains to start after store cattle, which were 
somewhat hard to get near the new colony. 

No rain yet, and we were in the end of January ; the fountains 
of heaven were dried up, but now all round the northern horizon 
the bush fires burnt continually, a pillar of smoke by day, and a 
pillar of fire by night. 

Nearer, by night, like an enemy creeping up to a beleaguered 
town. The weather had been very still for some time, and we took 
precaution to burn great strips of grass all round the paddocks to 
the north, but, in spite of all our precautions, I knew that, should 
a strong wind come on from that quarter, nothing short of a 
miracle would save us. 

But as yet the weather was very still, not very bright, but rather 
cloudy, and a dense haze of smoke was over everything, making 
the distances look ten times as far as they really were, and ren- 
dering the whole landscape as grey and melancholy as you can 
conceive. There was nothing much to be done, but to sit in the 
verandah, drinking claret- and- water, and watching and hoping for 
a thunder-storm. 

On the third of February the heat was worse than ever, but 
there was no wind ; and as the sun went dovm among the lurid 
smoke, red as blood, I thought I made out a few white brush- 
shaped clouds rising in the north. 

Jim and I sat there late, not talking much. We knew that if 
we were to be burnt out our loss would be very heavy ; but we 
thanked God that even were we to lose everything it would not be 
irreparable, and that we should still be wealthy. Our brood mares 
and racing stock were our greatest anxiety. We had a good stack 
of hay, by which we might keep them alive for another month, 
supposing all the grass was burnt ; but if we lost that our horses 
would probably die. I said at last, — 

“ Jim, we may make up our minds to have the run swept. The 
fire is burning up now.” 

“ Yes, it is brightening,” said he, “ but it must be twenty miles 
off still, and if it comes down with a gentle wind we shall save the 
paddocks and hay. There is a good deal of grass in the lower 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


190 


paddock. I am glad we had the forethought not to feed it down. 
Well, fire or no fire, I shall go to bed.” 

We went to bed, and, in spite of anxiety, mosquitoes, and heat, 
I fell asleep. In the grey morning I was awakened, nearly suffo- 
cated, by a dull continuous roar. It was the wind in the chimney. 
The north wind, so long imprisoned, had broke loose, and the 
boughs were crashing, and the trees were falling, before the majesty 
of his wrath. 

I ran out, and met James in the verandah. “It’s all up,” 1 
said. “ Get the women and children into the river, and let the 
men go up to windward with the sheep - skins. I’ll get on horse- 
back, and go out and see how the Morgans get on. That obstinate 
fellow will wish he had come in now.” 

Morgan was a stockman of ours, who lived, with a wife and two 
children, about eight miles to the northward. We always thought 
it would have been better for him to move in, hut he had put it 
off, and now the fire had taken us by surprise. 

I rode away, dead-up wind. Our station had a few large trees 
about it, and then all was clear plain and short grass for two 
miles ; after that came scrubby ranges, in an open glade of which 
the Morgans’ hut stood. I feared, from the density of the smoke, 
that the fire had reached them already, but I thought it my duty 
to go and see, for I might meet them fleeing, and help them with 
the children. 

I had seen many hush-fires, hut never such a one as this. The 
wind was blowing a hurricane, and, when I had ridden about two 
miles into scrub, high enough to brush my horse’s belly, I began 
to get frightened. Still I persevered, against hope ; the heat grew 
more fearful every moment ; but I reflected that I had often ridden 
up close to a bush-fire, turned when I began to see the flame 
through the smoke, and cantered away from it easily. 

Then it struck me that I had never yet seen a bush-fire in such 
a hurricane as this. Then I remembered stories of men riding 
for their lives, and others of burnt horses and men found in the 
bush. And, now, I saw a sight which made me turn in good 
earnest. 

I was in lofty timber, and, as I paused, I heard the mighty 
crackling of fire coming through the wood. At the same instant 
the blinding smoke burst into a million tongues of flickering flame, 
and I saw the fire — not where I had ever seen it before — not 
creeping along among the scrub — but up aloft, a hundred and fifty 
feet overhead. It had caught the dry bituminous tops of the 

Sheep-skins, on sticks, Used for beating out the fire when in short 
grass. 


200 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


higher houghs, and was flying along from tree-top to tree-top like 
lightning. Below, the wind was comparatively moderate, hut, up 
there, it was travelling twenty miles an hour. I saw one tree 
ignite like gun-cotton, and then my heart grew small, and I turned 
and fled. 

I rode as I never rode before. There were three miles to go 
ere I cleared the forest, and got among the short grass, where I 
could save myself — three miles ! Ten minutes nearly of intolerable 
heat, blinding smoke, and mortal terror. Any death but this ! 
Drowning were pleasant, glorious to sink down into the cool spark- 
ling water. But, to be burnt alive ! Fool that I was to venture 
so far ! I would give all my money now to be naked and penniless, 
rolling about in a cool pleasant river. 

The maddened, terrified horse went like the wind, hut not like 
the hurricane — that was too swift for us. The fire had outstripped 
us over-head, and I could see it dimly through the infernal choking 
reek, leaping and blazing a hundred yards before us, among the 
feathery foliage, devouring it, as the south wind devours the 
thunder clouds. Then I could see nothing. Was I clear of the 
forest ? Thank the Lord, yes — I was riding over grass. 

I managed to pull up the horse, and as I did so, a mob of kan- 
garoos blundered by, blinded, almost against me, noticing me no 
more in their terror than if I had been a stump or a stone. Soon 
the fire came hissing along through the grass scarcely six inches 
high, and I walked my horse through it ; then I tumbled off on 
the blackened ground, and felt as if I should die. 

I lay there on the hot black ground. My head felt like a block 
of stone, and my neck was stiff so that I could not move my head. 
My throat was swelled and dry as a sand-hill, and there was a 
roaring in my ears like a cataract. I thought of the cool water- 
falls among the rocks far away in Devon. I thought of everything 
that was cold and pleasant, and tlien came into my head about 
Dives praying for a drop of water. I tried to get up, but could 
not, so lay down again with my head upon my arm. 

It grew cooler, and the atmosphere was clearer. I got up, and, 
mounting my horse, turned homeward. Now I began to think 
about the station. Could it have escaped ? Impossible ! The fire 
would fly a hundred yards or niore such a day as this even in Ioav 
plain. No, it must be gone ! There was a great roll in the plain 
between me and home, so that I could see nothing of our place — 
all around the country was black, without a trace of vegetation. 
Behind me were the smoking ruins of the forest I had escaped 
from, where now the burnt- out trees began to thunder down rapidly, 
and before, to the south, I could see the fire raging miles away. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


201 


So the station is burnt, then ? No ! For as I top the ridge, 
there it is before me, standing as of old — a bright oasis in the 
desert of burnt country round. Ay ! the very hay-stack is safe ! 
And the paddocks ? — all right ! — glory he to God ! 

I got home and James came running to meet me. 

“ I was getting terribly frightened, old man,” said he. “I 
thought you were caught. Lord save us, you look ten years older 
than you did this morning ! ” 

I tried to answer, but could not speak for drought. He ran and 
got me a great tumbler of claret-and-water ; and, in the evening, 
having drunk about an imperial gallon of water, and taken after- 
wards some claret, I felt pretty well revived. 

Men were sent out at once to see after the Morgans, and found 
them perfectly safe, but very much frightened ; they had, however, 
saved their hut, for the fire had passed before the wind had got 
to its full strength. 

So we were delivered from the fire ; but still no rain. All day, 
for the next month, the hot north wind would blow till five o’clock, 
and then a cool southerly breeze would come up and revive us ; but 
still the heavens were dry, and our cattle died by hundreds. 

On the eighteenth of March, we sat in the verandah looking still 
over the blackened unlovely prospect, but now cheerfully and with 
hope ; for the eastern sky was piled up range beyond range with the 
scarlet and purple splendour of cloud-land, and, as darkness 
gathered, we saw the lightning, not twinkling and glimmering 
harmlessly about the horizon, as it had been all the summer, but 
falling sheer in violet-coloured rivers behind the dark curtain 
of rain that hung from the black edge of a teeming thunder- 
cloud. 

We had asked our overseer in that night, being Saturday, to 
drink with us ; he sat very still, and talked but little, as was his 
wont. I slapped him on the back, and said : — 

“ Do you remember, Geordie, that muff in Thalaba who chose 
the wTong cloud ? He should have got you or me to choose for 
him ; we wouldn’t have made a mistake, I know. We would have 
chosen such a one as yon glorious big-bellied fellow. See how 
grandly he comes growling up ! ” 

“It’s just come,” said he, “without the praying for. When 
the fire came owre the hill the other day, I just put up a bit 
prayer to the Lord, that He’d spare the hay-stack, and He spared 
it. (I didna stop working, ye ken ; I worked the harder ; if ye 
dinna mean to work, ye should na pray.) But I never prayed for 
rain, — I didna, ye see, like to ask the Lord to upset all His gran’ 
laws of electricity and evaporation, just because it would suit us. 


202 


THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 


I thocht He’d likely ken better than mysel. Hech, sirs, but that 
chiel’s riding hard ! ” 

A horseman appeared making for the station at full speed ; 
when he was quite close, Jim called out, “ By Jove, it is Doctor 
Mulhaus ! ” and we ran out into the yard to meet him. 

Before any one had time to speak, he shouted out : “ My dear 
boys, I’m so glad I am in time : we are going to see one of the 
grandest electrical disturbances it has ever been my lot to witness. 
I reined up just now to look, and I calculated that the southern 
point of explosion alone is discharging nine times in the minute. 
How is your barometer ? ” 

“ Haven’t looked. Doctor.” 

“Careless fellow,” he replied, “you don’t deserve to have 
one.” 

“ Never mind, sir, we have got you safe and snug out of the 
thunder-storm. It is going to be very heavy I think. I only hope 
we will have plenty of rain.” 

“Not much doubt of it,” said he. “Now come into the 
verandah and let us watch the storm.” 

We went and sat there ; the highest peaks of the great cloud 
alps, lately brilliant red, were now cold silver grey, harshly defined 
against a faint crimson background, and we began to hear the 
thunder rolling and muttering. All else was deadly still and 
heavy. 

“ Mark the lightning ! ” said the Doctor ; “ that which is be- 
fore the rain-wall is white, and that behind violet-coloured. Here 
comes the thundergust.” 

A fierce blast of wind came hurrying on, carrying a cloud of dust 
and leaves before it. It shook the four corners of the house and 
passed away. And now it was a fearful sight to seethe rain-spouts 
pouring from the black edge of the lower cloud as from a pitcher, 
nearly overhead, and lit up by a continuous blaze of lightning. 
Another blast of wind, now a few drops, and in ten minutes you 
could barely distinguish the thunder above the rattle of the rain 
on the shingles. 

It warred and banged around us for an hour, so that we could 
hardly hear one another speak. At length the Doctor bawled, — 

“ We shall have a crack closer than any yet, you’ll see ; we 
always have one particular one ; our atmosphere is not restored to 
its balance yet, — there ! ” 

The curtains were drawn, and yet, for an instant, the room was 
as bright as day. Simultaneously there came a crack and an 
explosion, so loud and terrifying, that, used as I was to such an 
event, I involuntarily jumped up from my seat. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


203 


“ Are you all right here ? ” said the Doctor ; and, running out 
into the kitchen, shouted, “ Any one hurt ? ” 

The kitchen girl said that the lightning had run all doAvn her 
hack like cold water, and the housekeeper averred that she thought 
the thunder had taken the roof of the house off. So we soon per- 
ceived that nothing was the matter, and sat down again to our 
discourse, and our supper. “Well,” began I, “here’s the rain 
come at last. In a fortnight there will he good grass again. We 
ought to start and get some store cattle.” 

“ But where ? ” replied James. “ We shall have to go a long 
way for them ; every one will he wanting the same thing now. 
We must push a long way north, and make a depot somewhere 
westward. Then we can pick them up by sixes and sevens at a 
time. When shall we go ? ” 

“ The sooner the better.” 

“ I think I will come with you,” said the Doctor. “ I have not 
been a journey for some time.” 

“Your conversation, sir,” I said, “will shorten the journey by 
one half” — which was sincerely said. 

Away we went northward, with the mountains on our left, leaving 
snow-streaked Kosciusko nearly behind us, till a great pass, 
through the granite walls, opened up to the westward, up which 
we turned. Mount Murray towering up the south. Soon we were 
on the Murrumbidgee, sweeping from side to side of his mountain 
valley in broad curves, sometimes rushing hoarse, swollen by the 
late rains, under beds of high timber, and sometimes dividing 
broad meadows of rich grass, growing green once more under the 
invigorating hand of autumn. All nature had awakened from her 
deep summer sleep, the air was brisk and nimble, and seldom 
did three happier men ride cn their way than James, the Doctor, 
and I. 

Good Doctor ! How he beguiled the way with his learning — in 
ecstasies all the time, enjoying everything, animate or inanimate, 
as you or I would enjoy a new play or a new opera. How I envied 
him ! He was like a man always reading a new and pleasant book. 
At first the stockmen rode behind, talking about beasts, and horses, 
and what not — often talking about nothing at all, but riding along 
utterly without thought, if such a thing could be. But soon I 
noticed they would draw up closer, and regard the Doctor with 
some sort of attention, till towards the evening of the second day, 
one of them, our old acquaintance Dick, asked the Doctor a ques- 
tion, as to why, if I remember right, certain trees should grow in 
certain localities, and there only. The Doctor reined up alongside 
him directly, and in plain forcible language explained the matter : 


204 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


how that some plants required more of one sort of substance than 
another, and how they get it out of particular soils ; and how, in 
the lapse of years, they had come to thrive best on the soil that 
suited them, and had got stunted and died out in other parts. 
“See,” said he, “how the turkey holds to the plains, and the 
pheasant (lyre-bird) to the scrub, because each one finds its food 
there. Trees cannot move ; but by time, and by positively re- 
fusing to grow on unkindly soils, they arrange themselves in the 
localities which suit them best.” 

So after this they rode with the Doctor always, both hearing 
him and asking him questions, and at last, won by his blunt kindli- 
ness, they grew to like and respect him in their way, even as we did. 

So we fared on through bad weather and rough country, en- 
joying a journey which, but for him, would have been a mere trial 
of patience. Northward ever, through forest and plain, over 
mountain and swamp, across sandstone, limestone, granite, and 
rich volcanic land, each marked distinctly by a varying vegetation. 
Sometimes we would camp out, but oftener managed to reach a 
station at night. We got well across the dry country between the 
Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan, now abounding with pools of 
water ; and, having crossed the latter river, held on our course to- 
wards Croker’s Range, which we skirted ; and, after having been 
about a fortnight out, arrived at the lowest station on the Mac- 
quarrie late in the afternoon. 

This was our present destination. The omier was a friend of 
ours, who gave us a hearty welcome, and, on our inquiries as to 
store cattle, thought that we might pick up a good mob of them 
from one station or another. “We might,” said he, “make a 
depot for them, as we collected them, on some unoccupied land 
down the river. It was poor country, but there was grass enough 
to keep them alive. He would show us a good place, in a fork, 
where it was impossible to cross on two sides, and where they 
would be easily kept together ; that was, if we liked to risk it.” 

“ Risk what ? ” he asked. 

“Blacks,” said he. “ They are mortal troublesome just now 
do^vn the river. I thought we had quieted them, but they have 
been up to their old games lately, spearing cattle, and so on. I 
don’t like, in fact, to go too far down there alone. I don’t think 
they are Macquarrie blacks ; I fancy they must have come up from 
the Darling through the marshes.” 

We thought we should have no reason to be afraid with such a 
strong party as ours ; and Owen, our host, having some spare 
cattle, we were employed for the next three days in getting them 
in. We got nearly a hundred head from him. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


205 


The first morning we got there the Doctor had vanished ; hut 
the third evening, as we were sitting dowai to supper, in he came, 
dead heat, with a great hag full of stones. YVhen we had drawn 
round the fire, I said : 

“ Have you got any new fossils for us to see ? ” 

“ Not one,” said he ; “ only some minerals.” 

“ Do not you think, sir,” said Owen, our host, “ that there are 
some ores of metals round this country ? The reason I ask you is, 
we so often pick up curious-coloured stones, like those we get from 
the miners at home, in Wales, where I come from.” 

“ I think you will find some rich mines near here soon. Stay ; 
it can do you no harm. I will tell you something : three days ago 
I followed up the river, and about twenty miles above this spot I 
became attracted by the conformation of the country, and re- 
marked it as being very similar to some very famous spots in 
South America. ‘ Here,’ I said to myself, ‘ Maximilian, you have 
your volcanic disturbance, your granite, your clay, slate, and 
sandst6ne upheaved, and seamed with quartz ; — why should you 
not discover here, what is certainly here, more or less ? ’ — I looked 
patiently for two days, and I will show you what I found.” 

He went to his bag and fetched an angular stone about as big 
as one’s fist. It was white, stained on one side with rust-colour, 
but in the heart veined with a bright yellow metallic substance, in 
some places running in delicate veins into the stone ; in others 
breaking out in large shining lumps. 

“ That’s iron-pyrites,” said I, as pat as you please. 

“ Goose ! ” said the Doctor ; “ look again.” 

I looked again, it was certainly different to iron-pyrites ; it was 
brighter, it ran in veins into the stone ; it was lumpy, solid, and 
clean. I said, “It is very beautiful ; tell us what it is ? ” 

“ Gold ! ” said he, triumphantly, getting up and walking 
about the room in an excited way ; ‘ ‘ that little stone is worth a 
pound ; there is a quarter of an ounce in it. Give me ten tons, 
only ten cartloads such stone as that, and I would huy a principality.” 

Every one crowded round the stone open-mouthed, and James 
said : 

“ Are you sure it is gold. Doctor ? ” 

“ He asks me if I know gold, when I see it, — me, you under- 
stand, who have scientifically examined all the best mines in 
Peru, not to mention the Minas Geraes in the Brazils ! My dear 
fellow, to a man who has once seen it, native gold is unmistak- 
able, utterly so ; there is nothing at all like it.” 

“ But this is a remarkable discovery, sir,” said Owen. “ What 
are you going to do ? ” 


206 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


I shall go to the Government,” said he, “ and make the best 
bargain I can.” 

I had better mention here that he afterwards did go to the 
Government, and announce his discovery. Kather to the Doctor’s 
disgust, however, though he acknowledged the wisdom of the 
thing, the courteous and able gentleman who then represented 
His Majesty, informed him that he was perfectly aware of the 
existence of gold, but that he for one should assert the prerogative 
of the Crown, and prevent any one mining on Crown-lands ; as he 
considered that, were the gold abundant, the effects on the 
convict population would be eminently disastrous. To which 
obvious piece of good sense the Doctor bowed his head, and the 
whole thing passed into oblivion — so much so, that when I heard 
of Hargreave’s discovery in 1851, I had nearly forgotten the 
Doctor’s gold adventure ; and I may here state my belief that the 
knowledge of its existence was confined to very few, and those 
well-educated men, who never guessed (how could they without 
considerable workings ?) how abundant it was. As for the stories 
of shepherds finding gold and selling it to the Jews in Sydney, 
they are very mythical, and I for one entirely disbelieve them. 

In time we had collected about 250 head of cattle from various 
points into the fork of the river, which lay further do^vn, some 
seven miles, than his house. As yet we had not been troubled 
by the black fellows. Those we had seen seemed pretty civil, and 
we had not allowed them to get familiar ; but this pleasant state 
of things was not to last. James and the Doctor, with one man, 
were away for the very last mob, and I was sitting before the 
fire at the camp, when Dick, who was left behind with me, asked 
for my gun to go and shoot a duck. I lent it him, and away he 
went, while I mounted my horse and rode slowly about, heading 
back such of the cattle as appeared to^be wandering too far. 

I heard a shot, and almost immediately another ; then I heard 
a queer sort of scream, which puzzled me extremely. I grew 
frightened and rode towards the quarter where the shots came 
from, and almost immediately heard a loud co’oe. I replied, and 
then I saw Dick limping along through the bushes, peering about 
him and holding his gun as one does when expecting a bird to 
rise. Suddenly he raised his gun and fired. Out dashed a 
black fellow from his hiding place, running across the open, and with 
his second barrel Dick rolled him over. Then I saw half-a-dozen 
others rise, shaking their spears ; but seeing me riding up, and 
supposing I was armed, they made off. 

“ How did this come about, Dick, my lad ? ” said I. “ This 
is a bad job.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


207 


“ Well,” he said, “ I just fired at a duck, and the moment my 
gun was gone off, up jumped half-a-dozen of them, and sent a 
shower of spears at me, and one has gone into my leg. They 
must a’ thought that I had a single-barrel gun and waited till I’d 
fired it ; but they found their mistake, the devils ; for I gave one 
of them a charge of shot in his stomach at twenty yards, and 
dropped him ; they threw a couple more spears, hut both missed, 
and I hobbled out as well as I could, loading as I went with a 
couple of tallow cartridges. I saw this other feast skulking, and 
missed him first time, hut he has got something to remember me 
by now.” 

‘‘ Do you think you can ride to the station and get some help ? ” 
said I. “I wish the others were hack.” 

‘‘ Yes,” he replied, “ I will manage it, hut I don’t like to leave 
you alone.” 

“ One must stay,” I said, ‘‘ and better the sound man than the 
wounded one. Come, start off, and let me get to the camp, or 
they will be plundering that next.” 

I started him off and ran hack to the camp. Everything was 
safe as yet, and the ground round being clear, and having a 
double-barrel gun and two pistols, I was not so very much 
frightened. It is no use to say I was perfectly comfortable, 
because I wasn’t. A Frenchman writing this would represent him- 
self as smoking a cigar, and singing with the greatest nonchalance. 
I did neither. Being an Englishman, I may be allowed to confess 
that I did not like it. 

I had fully made up my mind to fire on the first black who 
showed himself, but I did not get the opportunity. In about two 
hours I heard a noise of men shouting and whips cracking, and 
the Doctor and James rode up with a fresh lot of cattle. 

I told them what had happened, and we agreed to wait and 
watch till news should come from the station, and then to start. 
There was, as we thought, hut little danger while there were four 
or five together ; hut the worst of it was, that we were hut poorly 
armed. However, at nightfall, Owen and one of his men came 
down, reporting that Dick, who had been speared, was getting all 
right, and bringing also three swords and a brace of pistols. 

James and I took a couple of swords and began fencing, in 
play. 

“ I see,” said the Doctor, “ that you know the use of a sword, 
you two.” 

“Lord bless you!” I said, “we were in the Yeomanry 
(Landwehr you call it) ; weren’t we, Jim? I was a corporal.” 

“I wish,” said Owen, “ that, now we are together, five of us. 


208 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


you would come and give these fellows a lesson ; they want it 
badly.” 

“Indeed,” I said, “I think they have had lesson enough for 
the present. Dick has put down two of them. Beside, we could 
not leave the cattle.” 

“ I am sorry,” said James, “ that any of our party has had 
this collision with them. I cannot hear shooting the poor brutes. 
Let us move out of this, homeward, to-morrow morning.” 

Just before dark, who should come riding down from the station 
but Dick ! — evidently in pain, but making believe that he was 
quite comfortable. 

“ Why, Dick, my boy,” I said, “ I thought you were in bed ; 
you ought to be, at any rate.” 

“ Oh, there’s nothing much the matter with me, Mr. Hamlyn,” 
he said. “You will have some trouble with these fellows, unless 
I am mistaken. I was told to look after you once^ and I mean to 
do it.” 

(He referred to the letter that Lee had sent him years before.) 

That night Owen stayed with us at the camp. We set a watch, 
and he took the morning spell. Everything passed off quietly ; 
but when we came to examine our cattle in the morning, the lot 
that James had brought in the night before were gone. 

The river, flooded when we first came, had now lowered con- 
siderably, so that the cattle could cross if they really tried. 
These last, being wild and restless, had gone over, and we soon 
found the marks of them across the river. 

The Doctor, James, Dick, and I started off after them, and we 
armed ourselves for security. We took a sword a-piece, and each 
had a pistol. The ground was moist, and the beasts easily 
tracked ; so we thought an easy job was before us, but we soon 
changed our minds. 

Following on the trail of the cattle, we very soon came on the 
footsteps of a black fellow, evidently more recent than the hoof- 
marks ; then another footstep joined in, and another, and at last 
we made out that above a dozen blacks were tracking our cattle, 
and were between us and them. 

Still we followed the trail as fast as we could. I was uneasy, 
for we were insufficiently armed, but I found time to point out to 
the Doctor, what he had never remarked before, the wonderful 
difference between the naked foot-print of a white man and a 
savage. The white man leaves the impression of his whole sole, 
every toe being distinctly marked, while your black fellow leaves 
scarce any toe-marks, but seems merely to spurn the ground with 
the ball of his foot. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


209 


I felt very ill at ease. The morning was raw, and a dense fog 
was over everything. One always feels wretched on such a morn- 
ing, but on that one I felt miserable. There was an indefinable 
horror over me, and I talked more than any one, glad to hear the 
sound of my own voice. 

Once the Doctor turned round and looked at me fixedly from 
under his dark eyebrows. “ Hamlyn,” he said, don’t think 
you are well ; you talk fast, and are evidently nervous. We are 
in no danger, I think, but you seem as if you were frightened.” 

“ So I am. Doctor, but I don’t know what at.” 

Jim was riding first, and he turned and said, “ I have lost the 
black fellows’ track entirely : here are the hoof-marks, safe enough, 
but no foot-prints, and the ground seems to be rising.” 

The fog was very thick, so that we could see nothing above a 
hundred yards from us. We had come through forest all the way, 
and were wet with pushing through low shrubs. As we paused 
came a puff of air, and in five minutes the fog had rolled away, 
and a clear blue sky and a bright sun were overhead. 

Now we could see where we were. We were in the lower end 
of a precipitous mountain gulley, narrow where we were, and 
growing rapidly narrower as we advanced. In the fog we had 
followed the cattle-track right into it, passing, unobserved, two 
gi’eat heaps of tumbled rocks which walled the glen ; they were 
thickly fringed with scrub, and it immediately struck me that 
they stood just in the place where we had lost the tracks of the 
black fellows. 

I should have mentioned this, but, at this moment, James caught 
sight of the lost cattle, and galloped off after them ; we followed, 
and very quickly we had headed them do^vn the glen, and were 
posting homeward as hard as we could go. 

I remember well there was a young bull among them that took 
the lead. As he came nearly opposite the two piles of rock which 
I have mentioned, I saw a black fellow leap on a boulder, and send 
a spear into him. 

He headed back, and the other beasts came against him. Be- 
fore we could pull up we were against the cattle, and then all was 
confusion and disaster. Two hundred black fellows were on us at 
once, shouting like devils, and sending down their spears upon us 
like rain. I heard the Doctor’s voice, above all the infernal din, 
crying “ Viva ! Swords, my boys ; take your swords ! ” I heard 
two pistol shots, and then, with deadly wath in my heart, I 
charged at a crowd of them, who were huddled together, throwing 
their spears wildly, and laid about me with my cutlass like a 
madman. 

' ■ 15 


210 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


I saw them scrambling up over the rocks in wild confusion ; 
then I heard the Doctor calling me to come on. He had reined 
up, and a few of the discomfited savages were throwing spears at 
him from a long distance. When he saw me turn to come, he 
turned also, and rode after James, who was two hundred yards 
ahead, reeling in his saddle like a drunken man, grinding his 
teeth, and making fierce clutches at a spear which was buried 
deep in his side, and which at last he succeeded in tearing out. 
He went a few yards further, and then fell off his horse on the 
ground. 

We were both off in a moment, hut when I got his head on my 
lap, I saw he was dying. The Doctor looked at the wound, and 
shook his head. I took his right hand in mine, and the other I 
held upon his true and faithful heart, until I felt it flutter, and 
stop for ever. 

Then I broke down altogether. “ Oh ! good old friend ! Oh ! 
dear old friend, could you not wait for me ? Shall I never see you 
again ? ” 

Yes ! I think that I shall see him again. When I have crossed 
the dark river which we must all cross, I think he will be one of 
those who come dowm to meet me from the gates of the Everlast- 
ing City. 

****** 

‘‘A man,” said the Doctor to me, two days after, when we 
were sitting together in the station parlour, “ who approached as 
nearly the model which our Great Master has left us as any man 
I know. I studied and admired him for many years, and now I 
cannot tell you not to mourn. I can give you no comfort for the 
loss of such a man, save it he to say that you and I may hope to 
meet him again, and learn new lessons from him, in a better place 
than this.” 


CHAPTER XXV. 

IN WHICH THE NEW DEAN OF B MAKES HIS APPEAKANCE, 

AND ASTONISHES THE MAJOK OUT OF HiS PROPKIETY. 

One evening towards the end of that winter Mrs. Buckley and 
Sam sat alone before the fire, in the quickly-gathering darkness. 
The candles were yet unlighted, but the cheerful flickering light 
produced by the combustion of three or four logs of sheoak, topped 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


211 


by one of dead gum, shone most pleasantly on the well-ordered 
dining-room, on the close-dra^vn curtains, on the nicely-polished 
furniture, on the dinner-table, laid with fair array of white linen, 
silver, and glass, but, above all, on the honest, quiet face of Sam, 
who sat before his mother in an easy chair, with his head back, 
fast asleep. 

While she is alternately casting glances of pride and affection 
towards her sleeping son, and keen looks on the gum-log, in search 
of centipedes, let us take a look at her ourselves, and see how 
sixteen years have behaved to that handsome face. There is 
change here, but no deterioration. It is a little rounder, perhaps, 
and also a little fuller in colour, but there are no lines there yet. 
“ Happiness and ceaseless good temper don’t make many wrinkles, 
even in a warmer climate than old England,” says the Major, and 
says also, confidentially, to Brentwood, “ Put a red camelia in her 
hair, and send her to the opera even now, and see what a sensa- 
tion she would make, though she is nearer fifty than forty,” — 
which was strictly true, although said by her husband, for the 
raven hair is as black as it was wEen decorated with the moss-roses 
of Clere, and the eye is as brilliant as when it flashed with the 
news of Trafalgar. 

Now, the beautiful profile is turned again towards the sleeper as 
he moves. “ Poor boy ! ” she said. “ He is quite knocked up. 
He must have been twenty- four hours in the saddle. However, 
he had better be after cattle than in a billiard-room. I wonder if 
his father will be home to-night.” 

Suddenly Sam awoke. “ Heigho ! ” said he. “ I’m nice com- 
pany, mother. Have I been asleep ? ” 

“ Only for an hour or so, my boy,” said she. See ; I’ve been 
defending you while you slumbered. I have killed three centipedes, 
which came out of that old gum log. I cut this big one in half 
with the fire-shovel, and the head part walked away as if nothing 
had happened. I must tell the man not to give us rotten wood, 
or some of us will be getting a nip. It’s a long fifty miles from 
Captain Brentwood’s,” said Mrs. Buckley after a time. “ And 
that’s a very good day’s work for little Bronsewing, carrying your 
father.” 

“ And what has been the news since I have been away, — eh, 
mother ? ” 

‘‘ Why, the greatest news is that the Donovans have sold their 
station, and are off to Port Phillip.” 

‘■‘All the world is moving there,” said Sam. “Who has he 
sold it to ? ” 

“ That I can’t find out —There’s your father, my love.” 


212 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


There was the noise of horses’ feet and merry voices in the little 
gravelled yard behind the house, heard above a joyous barking of 
dogs. Sam ran out to hold his father’s horse, and soon came 
into the room again, accompanied by his father and Captain 
Brentwood. 

After the first greetings were over, candles were lighted, and the 
three men stood on the hearth-rug together — a very remarkable 
group, as you would have said, had you seen them. You might 
go a long while in any country without seeing three such men in 
company. 

Captain Brentwood, of Artillery renown, was a square, power- 
fully built man, say five-foot-ten in height. His face, at first 
sight, appeared rather a stupid one beside the Major’s, expressing 
rather determination than intelligence ; but once engage him in a 
conversation which interested him, and you would be surprised to 
see how animated it would become. Then the man, usually so 
silent, would open up the storehouse of his mind, speaking with 
an eloquence and a force which would surprise one who did not 
know him, and which made the Doctor often take the losing side 
of an argument for the purpose of making him speak. Add to 
this that he was a thoroughly amiable man, and, as Jim would tell 
you (in spite of a certain severe whipping you wot of), a most 
indulgent and excellent father. 

Major Buckley’s shadow had grown no less, — nay, rather 
greater, since first we knew him. In other respects, there was 
very little alteration, except that his curling brown hair had grown 
thinner about the temples, and was receding a little from his 
forehead. But what cared he for that ! He was not the last of 
the Buckleys. 

One remarks now, as the two stand together, that Sam, though 
but nineteen, is very nearly as tall as his father, and promises to 
be as broad across the shoulders, some day, being an exception to 
colonially-bred men in general, who are long and narrow. He is 
standing and talking to his father. 

“Well, Sam,” said the Major, “ so you’re back safe, — eh, my 
boy ! A rough time, I don’t doubt. Strange store-cattle are 
queer to drive at any time, particularly such weather as you have 
had.” 

“And such a lot, too! ” said Sam. “ Tell you what, father, 
it’s lucky you’ve got them cheap, for the half of them are off the 
ranges.” 

“ Scrubbers, eh ? ” said the Major ; well, we must take what we 
can catch, with this Port Phillip rush. Let’s sit down to dinner ; 
I’ve got some news that will please you. Fish, eh ? See there, 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


113 


Brentwood ! What do you think of that for a black-fish ? What 
was his weight, my dear? ” 

“ Seven pounds and a half, as the black fellows brought him 
in,” said Mrs. Buckley. 

“ A very pretty fish,” said the Major. “ My dear, what is the 
news ? ” 

“ Why, the Donovans have sold their station.” 

“ Ha ! ha I ” laughed the Major. “ Why, we have come from 
there to-day. Why, we were there last night at a grand party. 
All the Irishmen in the country side. Such a turmoil I haven’t 
seen since I was quartered at Cove. So that’s your news, — eh ? ” 

“ And so you stepped on there without calling at home, did 
you?” said Mrs. Buckley. “And perhaps you know who the 
purchaser is ? ” 

“ Don’t you know, my love ? ” 

“ No, indeed ! ” said Mrs. Buckley. “ I have been trying to 
find out these two days. It would be very pleasant to have a 
good neighbour there, — not that I wish to speak evil of the 
Donovans ; but really they did go on in such terrible style, you 
know, that one could not go there. Now, tell me who has bought 
Garoopna.” 

“ One Brentwood, captain of Artillery.” 

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Buckley. “Is he not joking now, 
Captain Brentwood ? That is far too good news to be true.” 

“It is true, nevertheless, madam,” said Captain Brentwood. “I 
thought it would meet with your approval, and I can see by Sam’s 
face that it meets with his. You see, my dear, Buckley has got 
to be rather necessary to me. I miss him when he is absent, and 
I want to be more with him. Again, I am very fond of my son 
Jim, and my son Jim is very fond of your son Sam, and is always 
coming here after him when he ought to be at home. So I think 
I shall see more of him when we are ten miles apart than when we 
are fifty. And, once more, my daughter Alice, now completing 
her education in Sydney, comes home to keep house for me in a 
few months, and I wish her to have tho advantage of the society 
of the lady whom I honour and respect above all others. So I 
have bought Garoopna.” 

“If that courtly bow is intended for me, my dear Captain,” 
said Mrs. Buckley, “ as I cannot but think it is, believe me that 
your daughter shall be as my daughter.” 

“Teach her to be in some slight degree like yourself, Mrs. 
Buckley,” said the Captain, “and you will put me under obliga- 
tions which I can never repay.” 

“Altogether, wife,” said the Major, “it is the most glorious 


214 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 


arrangement that ever was come to. Let us take a glass of sherry 
all round on it. Sam, my lad, your hand ! Brentwood, we have 
none of us ever seen your daughter. She should he hand- 
some.” 

“ You remember her mother ? ” said the Captain. 

“ Who could ever forget Lady Kate who had once seen her ? ” 
said the Major. 

“ Well, Alice is more beautiful than her mother ever was.” 

There went across the table a bright electric spark out of Mrs. 
Buckley’s eye into her husband’s, as rapid as those which move 
the quivering telegraph needles, and yet not unobserved, I think, 
by Captain Brentwood, for there grew upon his face a pleasant 
smile, which, rapidly broadening, ended in a low laugh, by no 
means disagreeable to hear, though Sam wondered what the joke 
could be until the Captain said, — 

“ An altogether comical party that last night at the Donovans’, 
Buckley I the most comical I ever was at.” 

Nevertheless, I don’t believe that it was that which made him 
laugh at all. 

“ A capital party I ” said the Major, laughing. “ Do you know, 
Brentwood, I always liked those Donovans, under the rose, and 
last night I liked them better than ever. They were not such very 
bad neighbours, although old Donovan wanted to fight a duel with 
me once. At all events, the welcome I got last night will make 
me remember them kindly in future.” 

“ T must go down and call there before they go,” said Mrs. 
Buckley. “ People who have been our neighbours so many years 
must not go away without a kind farewell. Was Desborough 
there ? ” 

“ Indeed, he was. Don’t you know he is related to the 
Donovans ? ” 

“ Impossible ! ” 

“ Fact, my dear, I assure you, according to Mrs. Donovan, who 
told me that the De Novans and the Desboroughs were cognate 
Norman families, who settled in Ireland together, and have since 
frequently intermarried.” 

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Buckley, laughing, “that Desborough 
did not deny it.” 

“ Not at all, my dear : as he said to me privately, ‘ Buckley, 
never deny a relationship with a man worth forty thousand pounds, 
the least penny, though your ancestors’ bones should move in their 
graves.’ ” 

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Buckley, “that he made himself as 
agreeable as usual.” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


215 


“ As usual, my dear. He made even Brentwood laugh ; he 
danced all the evening with that giddy girl Lesbia Burke, who let 
slip that she remembered me at Naples, in 1805, when she was 
there with that sad old set, and who consequently must be nearly 
as old as myself.” 

“ I hope you danced with her,” said Mrs. Buckley. 

“ Indeed I did, my dear. And she wore a wreath of yellow 
chrysanthemum, no other flowers being obtainable. I assure you 
we ‘ kept the flure ’ in splendid style.” 

They were all laughing at the idea of the Major dancing, when 
Sam exclaimed, “ Good Lord ! ” 

“ What’s the matter, my boy ? ” said the Major. 

“ I must cry peccavi,” said Sam. “ Father, you will never 
forgive me I I forgot till this moment a most important message. 
I was rather knocked up, you see, and went to sleep, and that sent 
it out of my head.” 

“ You are forgiven, my boy, be it what it may. I hope it is 
nothing very serious.” 

“ Well, it is very serious,” said Sam. “ As I was coming by 
Hanging Rock, I rode up to the door a minute, to see if Cecil was 
at home, — and Mrs. Mayford came out and wanted me to get ofl' 
and come in, but I hadn’t time ; and she said, ‘ The Dean is 
coming here to-night, and he’ll be with you to-morrow night, I 
expect. So don’t forget to tell your mother.’ ” 

“ To-morrow night ! ” said Mrs. Buckley, aghast. “ Why, my 
dear boy, that is to-night ! What shall I do ? ” 

“Nothing at all, my love,” said the Major, “but make them 
get some supper ready. He can’t have expected us to wait dinner 
till this time.” 

“I thought,” said Captain Brentwood, “that the Dean was gone 
back to England.” 

“ So he is,” said the Major. “But this is a new one. The 
good old Dean has resigned.” 

“ What is the new one’s name ? ” said the Captain. 

“ I don’t know,” said the Major. “ Desborough said it was a 
Doctor Maypole, and that he was very like one in appearance. But 
you can’t trust Desborough, you know; he never remembers names. 
I hope he may be as good a man as his predecessor.” 

“ I hope he may be no worse,” said Captain Brentwood ; “ but 
i hope, in addition, that he may be better able to travel, and look 
after his outlying clergy a little more.” 

“ It looks like it,” said the Major, “ to be down as far as this, 
before he has been three months installed.” 

Mrs. Buckley went out to the kitchen to give orders ; and after 


216 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


that they sat for an hour or more over their wine, till at length the 
Major said, — 

We must give him up in another hour.” 

Then, as if they had heard him, the dogs began to bark. Rover, 
who had, against rules, sneaked into the house, and lain 'perda 
under the sofa, discovered his retreat by low growling, as though 
determined to do his duty, let the consequences be what they 
might. Every now and then, too, when his feelings overpowered 
him, he would discharge a ‘ Woof,’ like a minute gun at sea. 

“ That must be him, father,” said Sam. “ You’ll catch it, Mr. 
Rover ! ” 

He ran out ; a tall black figure was sitting on horseback before 
the door, and a pleasant cheery voice said, “ Pray, is this Major 
Buckley’s?” 

“ Yes, sir,” said Sam ; “we have been expecting you.” 

He called for the groom, and held the stranger’s horse while he 
dismounted. Then he assisted him to unstrap his valise, and 
carried it in after him. 

The Major, Mrs. Buckley, and the Captain had risen, and were 
standing ready to greet the Church dignitary as he came in, in the 
most respectful manner. But when the Major had looked for a 
moment on the tall figure in black which advanced towards the 
fire ; instead of saying, “ Sir, I am highly honoured by your 
visit,” or “ Sir, I bid you most heartily welcome,” he dashed 
forward in the most undignified fashion, upsetting a chair, and 
seizing the reverend Dean % both hands, exclaimed, “ God bless 
my heart and soul ! Frank Maberly ! ” 

It was he : the mad curate, now grown into a colonial dean, — 
sobered, apparently, but unchanged in any material point : still 
elastic and upright, looking as if for twopence he would take ofi* 
the black cutaway coat and the broad -brimmed hat, and row seven 
in the University eight, at a moment’s notice. There seemed 
something the matter with him though, as he held the Major’s two 
hands in his, and looked on his broad handsome face. Something 
like a shortness of breath prevented his speech, and, strange, the 
Major seemed troubled with the same complaint ; but Frank got 
over it first, and said, — 

“ My dear old friend, I am so glad to see you ! ” 

And Mrs. Buckley said, laying her hand upon his arm, “ It 
seems as if all things were arranged to make my husband and 
myself the happiest couple in the world. If we had been asked 
to-night, whom of all people in the world we should have been 
most glad to see as the new Dean, we should have answered at 
once. Frank Maberly ; and here he is I ” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


217 


“ Then, you did not know whom to expect ? ” said Frank. 

“ Not we, indeed,” said the Major. “ Desborough said the new 
Dean was a Doctor Maypole ; and I pictured to myself an old 
schoolmaster with a birch rod in his coat tail-pocket. And we 
have been in such a stew all the evening about giving the great 
man a proper reception. Ha ! ha ! ha ! ” 

“ And will you introduce me to this gentleman ? ” said the 
Dean, moving towards Sam, who stood behind his mother. 

“This,” said the Major, with a radiant smile, “is my son 
Samuel, whom, I believe, you have seen before.” 

“ So, the pretty boy that I knew at Drumston,” said the Dean, 
laying his hands on Sam’s shoulders, “ has grown into this noble 
gentleman ! It makes me feel old, but I am glad to feel old under 
such circumstances. Let me turn your face to the light and see 
if I can recognise the little lad whom I used to carry pickaback 
across Hatherleigh Water.” 

Sam looked in his face — such a kindly good placid face, that it 
seemed beautiful, though by some rules it was irregular and ugly 
enough. The Dean laid his hand on Sam’s curly head, and said, 
“God bless you, Samuel Buckley,” and won Sam’s heart for ever. 

All this time Captain Brentwood had stood with his back against 
the chimney-piece, perfectly silent, having banished all expression 
from his countenance ; now, however. Major Buckley brought up 
the Dean and introduced him : — 

“My dear Brentwood, the Dean of B ; not Dean to us 

though, so much as our dear old friend Frank Maberly.” 

“ Involved grammar,” said the Captain to himself, but, added 
aloud : “A Churchman of your position, sir, will do me an 
honour by using my house ; but the Mr. Maberly of whom I have 
so often heard from my friend Buckley, will do me a still higher 
honour if he will aUow me to enrol him among the number of my 
friends.” 

Frank the Dean thought that Captain Brentwood’s speech would 
have made a good piece to turn into Greek prose, in the style of 
Demosthenes ; but he didn’t say so. He looked at the Captain’s 
stolid face for a moment, and said, as Sam thought, a little 
abruptly : 

“ I think, sir, that you and I shall get on very well together 
when we understand one another.” 

The Captain made no reply in articulate speech, but laughed 
internally, till his sides shook, and held out his hand. The Dean 
laughed too, as he took it, and said : 

“ I met a young lady at the Bishop’s the other day, a Miss 
Brentwood.” 


218 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 


“ My daughter, sir,” said the Captain. 

“ So I guessed — partly from the name, and partly from a certain 
look about the eyes, rather unmistakable. Allow me to say, sir, 
that I never remember to have seen such remarkable beauty in my 
life.” 

They sat Frank down to supper, and when he had done, the 
conversation was resumed. 

“By-the-hye, Major Buckley,” said he, “I miss an old friend, 
who I heard was living with you ; a very dear old friend, — where 
is Doctor Mulhaus ? ” 

“ Dear Doctor,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ this is his home indeed, 
but he is away at present on an expedition with two old Devon 
friends, Hamlyn and Stockbridge.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Frank, “ I have heard of those men ; they came 
out here the year before the Vicar died. I never knew either of 
them, but I well remember how kindly Stockbridge used to be 
spoken of by every one in Drumston. I must make his ac- 
quaintance.” 

“ You will make the acquaintance of one of the finest fellows in 
the world. Dean,” said the Major ; “ I know no worthier man than 
Stockbridge. I wish Mary Thornton had married him.” 

“ And I hear,” said Frank, “ that the pretty Mary is your next 
door neighbour, in partnership with that excellent giant Troubridge. 
I must go and see them to-morrow. I will produce one of those 
great roaring laughs of his, by reminding him of our first intro- 
duction at the Palace, through a rat.” 

“I am sorry to say,” said the Major, “ that Tom is away at 
Port PhiUip, with cattle.” 

“ Port Phillip again,” said Frank ; “I have heard of nothing 
else throughout my journey. I am getting bored with it. Will 
you tell me what you know about it for certain ? ’ ’ 

“ Well,” said the Major, “ it lies about 250 miles south of this, 
though we cannot get at it without crossing the mountains in con- 
sequence of some terribly dense scrub on some low ranges close to 
it, which they call, I believe, the Dandenong. It appears, how- 
ever, when you are there, that there is a great harbour, about forty 
miles long, surrounded with splendid pastures, which stretch west 
further than any man has been yet. Take it aU in all, I should 
say it was the best watered and most available piece of country 
.yet discovered in New Holland.” 

“ Any good rivers ? ” asked the Dean. 

“ Plenty of small ones, only one of any size, apparently, which 
seems to rise somewhere in this direction, and goes in at the head 
of the hay. They tried years ago to form a settlement on this bay, 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


219 


but Collins, the man entrusted with it, could find no clean water, 
which seems strange, as there is, according to all accounts, a fine 
full-flowing river running by the town.” 

“ They have formed a town there, then? ” said the Dean. 

“ There are a few wooden houses gone up by the river side. I 
believe they are going to make a town there, and call it Melbourne: 
we may live to see it a thriving place.” 

The Major has lived to see his words fulfilled — fulfilled in such 
marvellous sort, that bald bare statistics read like the wildest 
romance. At the time he spoke, twenty-two years ago from this 
present year, 1858, the Yarra rolled its clear waters to the sea 
through the unbroken solitude of a primeval forest, as yet unseen 
by the eye of a white man. Now there stands there a noble city, 
with crowded wharves, containing with its suburbs not less than 
120,000 inhabitants. 1,000 vessels have lain at one time side by 
side, off the mouth of that little river ; and through the low sandy 
heads that close the great port towards the sea, thirteen miliiuns 
sterling of exports is carried away each year by the finest ships in 
the world. Here, too, are waterworks constructed at fabulous 
expense, a service of steam- ships, between this and the other great 
cities of Australia, vying in speed and accommodation with the 
coasting steamers of Great Britain ; noble churches, handsome 
theatres. In short, a great city, which, in its amazing rapidity of 
growth, utterly surpasses all human experience. 

I never stood in Venice contemplating the decay of the grand 
palaces of her old merchant princes, whose time has gone by for 
ever. I never watched the slow downfall of a great commercial 
city ; but I have seen what to him who thinks aright is an equally 
grand subject of contemplation — the rapid rise of one. I have 
seen what but a small moiety of the world, even in these days, has 
seen, and what, save in this generation, has never been seen before, 
and wiU, I think, never be seen again. I have seen Melbourne. 
Five years in succession did I visit that city, and watch each year 
how it spread and grew until it was beyond recognition. Every 
year the press became denser, and the roar of the congregated 
thousands grew louder, till at last the scream of the flying engine 
rose above the hubbub of the streets, and two thousand miles of 
electric wire began to move the clicking needles with ceaseless 
intelligence. 

Unromantic enough, but beyond all conception wonderful. I 
stood at the east end of Bourke Street, not a year ago, looking at 
the black swarming masses, which thronged the broad thorough- 
fare below. All the town lay at my feet, and the sun was going 
down beyond the distant mountains ; I had just crossed from the 


220 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


front of the new Houses of Legislature, and had nearly been run 
over by a great omnibus. Partly to recover my breath, and partly, 
being not used to large cities, to enjoy the really fine scene before 
me, I stood at the corner of the street in contemplative mood. I 
felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked round, — it was Major 
Buckley. 

“ This is a wonderful sight, Hamlyn,” said he. 

“ When you think of it,” I said, “ really think of it, you know, 
how wonderful it is ! ” 

“ Brentwood,” said the Major, “ has calculated by his mathe- 
matics that the progress of the species is forty-seven, decimal 
eight, more rapid than it was thirty-five years ago.” 

“ So I should be prepared to believe,” I said ; “ where will it all 
end ? Will it be a grand universal republic, think you, in which 
war is unknown, and universal prosperity has banished crime ? I 
may be too sanguine, but such a state of things is possible. This 
is a sight which makes a man look far into the future.” 

“ Prosperity,” said the Major, “ has not done much towards 
abolishing crime in this town, at all events ; and it would not take 
much to send all this back into its primeval state.” 

“ How so. Major? ” said I ; “I see here the cradle of a new 
and mighty empire.” 

“ Two rattling good thumps of an earthquake,” said the Major, 
“ would pitch Melbourne into the middle of Port Phillip, and bury 
all the gold far beyond the reach even of the Ballarat deep-sinkers. 
The world is very,very young, my dear Hamlyn. Come down and 
dine with me at the club.” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

WHITE HEATHENS. 

Captain Brentwood went back to Garoopna next morning ; but 
Frank Maberly kept to his resolution of going over to see Mary ; 
and, soon after breakfast, they were all equipped ready to accom- 
pany him, standing in front of the door, waiting for the horses. 
Frank was remarking how handsome Mrs. Buckley looked in her 
hat and habit, when she turned and said to him, — 

“ My dear Dean, I suppose you never jump over five-barred 
gates now- a- days ? Do you remember how you used to come over 
the white gate at the Vicarage ? I suppose you are getting too 
dignified for any such thing ? ’ ’ 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


221 


There was a three-railed fence dividing the lower end of the 
yard from the paddock. He rammed his hat on tight, and took it 
flying, with his black coat-tails fluttering like wings ; and, coming- 
hack laughing, said, — 

“ There’s a hit of the old Adam for you, Mrs. Buckley ! Be 
careful how you defy me again.” 

The sun was bright overhead, and the land in its full winter 
verdure, as they rode along the banks of the creek that led to 
Toonarbin. Frank Maberly was as humorous as ever, and many a 
merry laugh went ringing through the woodland solitudes, sending 
the watchman cockatoo screaming aloft to alarm the flock, or 
startling the brilliant thick- clustered lories (richest coloured of all 
parrots in the world), as they hung chattering on some silver-leaved 
acacia, bending with their weight the fragile boughs down towards 
the clear still water, lighting up the dark pool with strange, bright 
reflections of crimson and blue ; startling, too, the feeding doe- 
kangaroo, who skipped slowly away, followed by her young one — 
so slowly that the watching travellers expected her to stop each 
moment, and could scarcely believe she was in full flight till she 
topped a low ridge and disappeared. 

“ That is a strange sight to a European, Mrs. Buckley,” said 
Frank ; “a real wild animal. It seems so strange to me, now, to 
think that I could go and shoot that beast, and account to no man 
for it. That is, you Imow, supposing I had a gun, and powder and 
shot, and, also, that the kangaroo would be fool enough to wait till 
I was near enough ; which, you see, is pre-supposing a great deal. 
Are they easily approached ? ” 

“ Easily enough, on horseback,” said Sam, “ but very difficult 
to come near on foot, which is also the case with all wild animals 
and birds worth shooting in this country. A footman,* you see, 
they all mistake for their hereditary enemy, the blackfellow ; but, 
as yet, they have not come to distinguish a man on horseback from 
a fourfooted beast. And this seems to show that animals have 
their traditions like men.” 

“ Pray, Sam, are not these pretty beasts, these kangaroos, 
becoming extinct ? ” 

“ On sheep-runs, very nearly so. Sheep drive them off directly : 
but on cattle-runs, so far from becoming extinct, they are becom- 
ing so numerous as to be a nuisance ; consuming a most valuable 
quantity of grass.” 

* Let not Charles or Jeames suppose that they or their brethren 
of the plush are here spoken of. Could they be mistaken for black- 
fellows? No; the word footman merely means one who goes afoot 
instead of riding. 


222 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ How can you account for that ? ” 

u Yery easily,” said Sam ; “ their enemies are all removed. 
The settlers have poisoned, in well-settled districts, the native 
dogs and eagle-hawks, wdiich formerly kept down their numbers. 
The blacks prefer the beef of the settlers to bad and hard-earned 
kangaroo venison ; and, lastly, the settlers never go after them, 
but leave them to their own inventions. So that the kangaroo has 
better times of it than ever.” 

“ That is rather contrary to what one has heard, though,” said 
Frank. 

“ But Sam is right. Dean,” said the Major. “ People judge 
from seeing none of them on the plains, from which they have 
been driven by the sheep ; but there are as many in the forest as 
ever.” 

“ The Emu, now,” said Frank, “ are they getting scarce ? ” 

“ They will soon be among the things of the past,” said the 
Major ; “ and I am sorry for it, for they are a beautiful and harm- 
less bird.” 

“ Major,” said Frank, “ how many outlying huts have 
you?” 

“Five,” said the Major. “Four shepherds’ huts, and one 
store-keeper’s in the range, which we call the heifer station.” 

“You have no church here, I know,” said Frank; “ but do 
these men get any sort of religious instruction ? ” 

“None whatever,” said the Major. “I have service in my 
house on Sunday, but I cannot ask them to come to it, though 
sometimes the stockmen do come. The shepherds, you know, are 
employed on Sunday as on any other day. Sheep must eat ! ” 

“ Are any of these men convicts ? ” 

“ All the shepherds,” said the Major. “ The stockman and his 
assistant are free men, but their hut-keeper is bond.” 

“ Are any of them married ? ” 

“ Two of the shepherds ; the rest single ; but I must tell you 
that on our run we keep up a regular circulation of books among 
the huts, and my wife sticks them full of religious tracts, which is 
really about all that we can do without a clergyman.” 

“Do you find they read your tracts, Mrs. Buckley?” asked 
Frank. 

“ No,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ wdth the exception, perhaps, of 
‘ Black Giles the Poacher,’ which always comes home very dirty. 
Narrative tracts they will read when there is nothing more lively 
at hand ; but such treatises as ‘ Are You Keady ? ’ and ‘ The 
Sinner’s Friend,’ fall dead. One copy lasts for years.” 

“One copy of either of them/’ said Frank, “would last me 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


223 


some time. Then these fellows Major, are entirely godless, I 
suppose ? ” 

“^Well, I’ll tell you, Dean,” said the Major, stopping shortj 

it s about as had as had can he ! it can’t he worse, sir. If hy 
any means you could make it worse, it would he hy sending such 
men round here as the one who was sent here last. He served as 
a standing joke to the hands for a year or more ; and I believe he 
was sincere enough, too.” 

“ I must invade some of these huts, and see what is to he done,” 
said Frank. “ I have had a hard spell of work in London since 
old times ; hut I have seen enough already to tell me that that 
work was not so hopeless as this will be. I think, however, that 
there is more chance here than among the little farmers in the 
settled districts. Here, at all events, I shan’t have the rum-hottle 
eternally standing between me and my man. What a glorious, 
independent, happy set of men are those said small freeholders. 
Major ! What a happy exchange an English peasant makes when 
he leaves an old, well-ordered society, the ordinances of religion, 
the various give-and-take relations between rank and rank, which 
make up the sum of English life, for independence, godlessness, 
and rum ! He gains, say you ! Yes, he gains meat for his 
dinner every day, and voild tout I Contrast an English workhouse 
schoolboy — I take the lowest class for example, a class which 
should not exist — with a small farmer’s son in one of the settled 
districts. Which wiU make the most useful citizen ? Give me 
the workhouse lad ! ” 

“ Oh, but you are over-stating the case, you know. Dean,” said 
the Major. “ You must have a class of small farmers ! Wherever 
the land is fit for cultivation it must he sold to agriculturists ; or, 
otherwise, in case of a war, we shall he dependent on Europe and 
America for the bread we eat. I know some excellent and exem^ 
plary men who are farmers, I assure you.” 

“ Of course ! of course ! ” said Frank. “ I did not mean quite 
all I said ; hut I am angry and disappointed. I pictured to my- 
self the labourer, English, Scotch, or Irish — a man whom I know, 
and have lived with and worked for some years, emigrating, and, 
after a few years of honest toil, which, compared to his old hard 
drudgery, was child’s-play, saving money enough to buy a farm. 
I pictured to myself this man accumulating wealth, happy, honest, 
godly, bringing up a family of brave hoys and good girls, in a 
country where, theoretically, the temptations to crime are all but 
removed : this is what I imagined. I come out here, and what 
do I find ? My friend the labourer has got his farm, and is pros- 
pering, after a sort. He has turned to he a drunken, godless, im- 


224 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


pudent fellow, and his wife little better than himself ; his daughters 
dowdy hussies ; his sons lanky, lean, pasty-faced, blaspheming 
blackguards, drinking rum before breakfast, and living by cheating 
one another out of horses. Can you deny this picture ? ” 

“Yes,” said the Major, “I can disprove it by many happy 
instances, and yet, to say the truth, it is fearfully true in as many 
more. There is no social influence in the settled districts ; there 
are too many men without masters. Let us wait and hope.” 

“ This is not to the purpose at present, though,” said Mrs. 
Buckley. “ See what you can do for us in the bush, my dear 
Bean. You have a very hopeless task before you, I fear.” 

“ The more hopeless, the greater glory, madam,” said Frank, 
taking ofi* his hat and waving it. Called, Chosen, and Faithful. 
“ There is a beautiful house ! ” 

“That is Toonarbin,” said the Major; “.and there’s Mary 
Hawker in the verandah.” 

“ Let us see,” said Mrs. Buckley, “if she will know him. If 
she does not recognise him, let no one speak before me.” 

When they had ridden up and dismounted, Mrs. Buckley pre- 
sented Frank. “ My dear,” said she, “ the Bean is honouring 
us by staying at Baroona for a week, and proposes to visit round 
at the various stations. To-morrow we go to the Mayfords, and 
next day to Garoopna.” 

Mary bowed respectfully to Frank, and said, “ that she felt 
highly honoured,” and so forth. “My partner is gone on a 
journey, and my son is away on the run, or they would have joined 
with me in bidding you welcome, sir.” 

Frank would have been highly honoured at making their 
acquaintance. 

Mary started, and looked at him again. “ Mr. Maberly ! Mr. 
Maberly ! ” she said, “ your face is changed, but your voice is un- 
changeable. You are discovered, sir ! ” 

“ And are you glad to see me ? ” 

“ No ! ” said Mary, plainly. 

“ Now,” said Mrs. Buckley to herself, “ she is going to give us 
one of her tantrums. I wish she would behave like a reasonable 
being. She is always bent on making a scene ; ” but she kept this 
to herself, and only said aloud : “ Mary, my dear ; Mary ! ” 

“I am sorry to hear you say so, Mrs. Hawker,” said Frank : 
“ but it is just and natural.” 

“Natural,” said Mary, “ and just. You are connected in my 
mind with the most unhappy and most degraded period of my life. 
Can you expect that I should be glad to see you ? You were kind 
to me then, as is your nature to be, kind and good above all men 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


•225 


whom I know. I thought of you always with love and admiration, 
as one whom I deeply honoured, but would not care to look upon 
again. As the one of all whom I would have forget me in my dis- 
grace. And now, to-day of all days, just when I have found the 
father’s vices confirmed in the son, you come before me, as if from 
the bowels of the earth, to remind me of what I was.” 

Mrs. Buckley was very much shocked and provoked by this, but 
held her tongue magnanimously. And what do you think, my dear 
reader, was the cause of all this hysteric tragic nonsense on the 
part of Mary ? Simply this. The poor soul had been put out of 
temper. Her son Charles, as I mentioned before, had had a 
scandalous liaison with one Meg Macdonald, daughter of one of 
the Donovans’ (now Brentwood’s) shepherds. That morning, this 
brazen hussy, as Mary very properly called her, had come coolly up 
to the station and asked for Charles. And on Mary’s shaking her 
fist at her, and bidding her be gone, she had then and there rated 
poor Mary in the best of Gaelic for a quarter of an hour ; and 
Mary, instead of venting her anger on the proper people, had 
taken her old plan of making herself disagreeable to those who had 
nothing to do with it, which naturally made Mrs. Buckley very 
angry, and even ruffled the placid Major a little, so that he was 
not sorry when he saw in his wife’s face, from the expression he 
knew so well, that Mary was going to “ catch it.” 

“ I wish, Mary Hawker,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ that you would 
remember that the Dean is our guest, and that on our account 
alone there is due to him some better welcome than what you have 
given him.” 

“ Now, you are angry with me for speaking truth too abruptly,” 
said Mary, crying. 

“Well, I am angry with you,” said Mrs. Buckley. “If that 
was the truth, you should not have spoken it now. You have no 
right to receive an old friend like this.” 

“You are very unkind to me,” said Mary. “Just when after 
so many years’ peace and quietness my troubles are beginning 
again, you are all turning against me.” And so she laid down 
her head and wept. 

“ Dear Mrs. Hawker,” said Frank, coming up and taking her 
hand, “ if you are in trouble, I know well that my visit is well 
timed. Where trouble and sorrow are, there is my place, there 
lies my work. In prosperity my friends sometimes forget me, but 
my hope and prayer is, that when affliction and disaster come, I 
may be with them. You do not want me now ; but when you do, 
God grant I may be with you ! Remember my words.” 

She remembered them well. 

16 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


236 

Frank made an excuse to go out, and Mary, crying bitterly, 
went into her bedroom. When she was gone, the Major, who had 
been standing by the window, said, — 

“ My dear wife, that boy of hers is aggravating her. Don’t be 
too hard upon her.” 

“ My dear husband,” said Mrs. Buckley, “I have no patience 
with her, to welcome an old friend, whom she has not seen for 
nearly twenty years, in that manner ! It is too provoking.” 

‘‘You see, my love,” said the Major, “that her nerves have 
been very much shaken by misfortune, and at times she is really 
not herself.” 

“And I tell you Avhat, mother dear,” said Sam, “Charles 
Hawker is going on very badly. I tell you, in the strictest con- 
fidence, mind, that he has not behaved in a very gentlemanlike 
way in one particular, and if he was any one else but who he is, I 
should have very little to say to him.” 

“ Well, my dear husband and son,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ I will 
go in and make the amende to her. Sam, go and see after the 
Dean.” 

Sam went out, and saw Frank across the yard playing with the 
dogs. He was going towards him, when a man’entering the yard 
suddenly came up and spoke to him. 

It was William Lee — grown older, and less wild-looking, since 
we saw him first at midnight on Dartmoor, but a striking person 
still. His hair had become grizzled, but that was the only sign 
of age he showed. There was still the same vigour of motion, 
the same expression of enormous strength about him as formerly ; 
the principal change was in his face. Eighteen years of honest 
work, among people who in time, finding his real value, had got to 
treat him more as a friend than a servant, had softened the old 
expression of reckless ferocity into one of good-humoured indepen- 
dence. And Tom Troubridge, no careless observer of men, had 
said once to Major Buckley, that he thought his face grew each 
year more like what it must have been when a boy. A bold flight 
of fancy for Tom, but, like all else he said, true. 

Such was William Lee, as he stopped Sam in the yard, and, 
with a bold, honest look of admiration, said, — 

“It makes me feel young to look at you, Mr. Buckley. You 
are a great stranger here lately. Some young lady to run after, I 
suppose ? Well, never mind ; I hope it ain’t Miss Blake.” 

“ A man may not marry his grandmother, Lee,” said Sam, 
laughing. 

“ True for you, sir,” said Lee. “ That was wrote up in Drum- 
ston church, I mind, and some other things alongside of it, which 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


227 


I could say by heart once on a time — all on black boards, with 
yellow letters. And also, I remember a spick and span new board, 
about how Anthony Hamlyn (that’s Mr. Geoffry Hamlyn’s father) 
‘ repaired and beautified this church ; ’ which meant that he built 
a handsome new pew for himself in the chancel. Lord, I think I 
see him asleep in it now. But never mind that — I’ve kept a pup 
of Fly’s for you, sir, and got it through the distemper. Fly’s pup, 
by Kollicker, you know.” 

“Oh, thank you,” said Sam. “ I am really much obliged to 
you. But you must let me know the price, you know, Lee. The 
dog should be a good one.” 

“ Well, Mr. Buckley,” said Lee, “ I have been cosseting this 
little beast up in the hopes you’d accept it as a present. And 
then, says I to myself, when he takes a new chum out to see some 
sport, and the dog pulls doum a flying doe, and the dust goes up 
like smoke, and the dead sticks come flying about his ears, he 
wiU say to his friends, ‘ That’s the dog Lee gave me. Where’s 
his equal ? ’ So don’t be too proud to take a present from an old 
friend.” 

“ Not I, indeed, Lee,” said Sam. “ I thank you most 
heartily.” 

“ Who is this long gent in black, sir ? ” said Lee, looking to- 
wards Frank, who was standing and talking with the Major. “ A 
parson, I reckon.” 

“ The Dean of B ” answered Sam. 

“ Ah ! so,”— said Lee, — “ come to give us some good advice ? 
Well, we want it bad enough, I hope some on us may foller it. 
Seems a man, too, and not a monkey.” 

“ My father says,” said Sam, “ that he was formerly one of the 
best boxers he ever saw.” 

Any further discussion of Frank’s physical powers was cut short 
by his coming up to Sam and saying, — 

“ I was thinking of riding out to one of the outlying huts, to 
have a little conversation with the men. Will you come with 
me ? ” 

“If you will allow me, I shall be delighted beyond all 
measure.” 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” said Lee, “ but I understood you to 
say that you were going to one of our huts to give the men a dis- 
course. Would you let me take you out to one of them ? I’d 
like well to hear what you’d got to say myself, sir, and I promise 
you the lads I’ll show you want good advice as well as any.” 

“ You will do me infinite service,” said Frank. “ Sam, if you 
will excuse me, let me ask you to stay behind. I have a fancy for 


228 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


going up alone. Let me take tliese men in the rough, and see 
what I can do unassisted.” 

“ You will be apt to find them uncivil, sir,” said Sam. “I am 
known, and my presence would ensure you outward respect at all 
events.” 

“ Just what I thought,” said Frank. “ But I want to see what 
I can do alone and unassisted. No ; stay, and let me storm the 
place single-handed.” 

So Lee and he started toward the ranges, riding side by side. 

“ You will find, sir,” said Lee, that these men, in this here 
hut, are a rougher lot than you think for. Very like they’ll be 
cheeky. I would almost have wished you’d a’ let Mr. Buckley 
come. He’s a favourite round here, you see, and you’d have gone 
in as his friend.” 

‘‘ You see,” said Frank, turning confidentially to Lee, “ I am 
not an ordinary parson. I am above the others. And wKat I 
want is not so much to see what I can do myself, but what sort of 
a reception any parson coming hap-hazard among these men will 
get. That is w% I left Mr. Buckley behind. Do you understand 
me?” 

I understand you, sir,” said Lee. “ But I’m afear’d.” 

“ What are you afraid of ? ” said Frank, laughing. 

“ Why, if you’ll excuse me, sir, that you’ll only get laughed 
at.” 

“ That all ! ” said Frank. “ Laughter breaks no bones. What 
are these men that we are going to see ? ” 

“ Why, one,” said Lee, “ is a young Jimmy (I beg your pardon, 
sir, an emigrant), the other two are old prisoners. Now see here. 
These prisoners hate the sight of a parson above all mortal men. 
And, for why ? Because, when they’re in prison, all their indul- 
gences, and half their hopes of liberty depend on how far they can 
manage to humbug the chaplain with false piety.'-' And so, when 
they are free again, they hate him worse than any man. I am an 
old prisoner myself, and I know it.” 

“ Have you been a prisoner, then ? ” said Frank, surprised. 

“ I was transported, sir, for poaching.” 

“ That all ! ” said Frank. “ Then you were the victim of a 
villainous old law. Do you know,” he added, laughing, “ that I 
rather believe I have earned transportation myself? I have a 
horrible schoolboy recollection of a hare who w^ould squeak in my 
pocket, and of a keeper passmg within ten yards of where I lay 
hidden. If that is all, give me your hand.” 

* It must be remembered that Lee’s prison experiences went so far back 
as about 1811. — H. K. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


229 


Lee shook his head. “ That is what I was sent out for,” said 
he, “ but since then there are precious few villainies I have not 
committed. You hadn’t ought to shake hands with me, sir.” , 

Frank laid his hand kindly on his shoulder. “I am not a 
judge,” he said. “ I am a priest. We must talk together again. 
Now, we have no time, for, if I mistake not, there is our destination.” 

They had been riding through splendid open forest, growing 
denser as they approached the ranges. They had followed a creek 
all the way, or nearly so, and now came somewhat suddenly on a 
large reedy waterhole, walled on all sides by dense stringy-hark 
timber, thickly undergrown with scrub.''' Behind them opened a 
long vista formed by the gully, through which they had been 
approaching, dowm which the black burnt stems of the stringy- 
hark were agreeably relieved by the white stems of the red and 
blue gum, growing in the moister and more open space near the 
creek, t In front of them was a slab hut of rich mahogany colour, 
by no means an unpleasing object among the dull unbroken green 
of the forest. In front of it was a trodden space littered with the 
chips of firewood. A pile of the last article lay a few yards in 
front of the door. And against the walls of the tenement was a 
long bench, on which stood a calabash, with a lump of soap and a 
coarse towel ; a camp oven, and a pair of hlack-top hoots, and 
underneath which lay a noble cattle dog, who, as soon as he saw 
them, hurst out into furious harking, and prepared to give battle. 

“ Will you take my horse for me,” said Frank to Lee, “ while 
I go inside ? ” 

“ Certainly, sir,” said Lee. “ But mind the dog.” 

Frank laughed and jumped off. The dog was unprepared for 
this. It was irregular. The proper and usual mode of proceed- 
ing would have been for the stranger to have stayed on horseback, 
and for him (the dog) to have barked himself hoarse, till some one 
came out of the hut and pacified him by throwing billets of wood 
at him ; no conversation possible till his harking was turned into 
mourning. He was not up to the emergency. He had never seen 
a man clothed in black from head to foot before. He probably 
thought it was the D — 1. His sense of duty not being strong 
enough to outweigh considerations of personal safety, he fled round 
the house, and being undecided whether to hark or to howl, did 
both, while Frank opened the door and went in. 

* Scrub . — I have used, and shall use, this word so often, that some 
explanation is due to the English reader. I can give no better definition 
of it than by saying that it means “ slirubbery.” 

t Creek . — Tbe English reader must understand that a creek means a 
succession of waterholes, unconnected for nine months in the year. 


230 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


The hut was like most other bush huts, consisting of one undi- 
vided apartment, formed of split logs, called slabs, set upright in 
the ground. The roof was of bark, and the whole interior was 
stained by the smoke into a rich dark brown, such as Teniers or 
our own beloved Cattermole would delight in. You entered by a 
door in one of the long sides, and saw that the whole of the end 
on your right was taken up by a large fireplace, on which blazed a 
pile of timber. Round the walls were four bed places, like the 
bunks on board ship, each filled with a heap of frouzy blankets, 
and in the centre stood a rough table, surrounded by logs of wood, 
sawed square off, which served for seats. 

The living occupants of the hut were scarcely less rude than 
the hut itself. One of the bed places was occupied by a sleepy, 
black-haired, not bad-looking young fellow, clad in greasy red 
shirt, greasy breeches and boots, and whose shabby plated spurs 
were tangled in the dirty blankets. He was lying on his back, 
playing with a beautiful little parrot. Opposite him, sitting up in 
his bunk, was another young fellow, with a singularly coarse, repul- 
sive countenance, long yellow hair, half-way down his back, clothed 
like the other in greasy breeches. This last one was puffing at a 
short black pipe, in an affected way, making far more noise than 
was necessary in that operation, and seemed to be thinking of 
something insolent to say to the last speaker, whoever he may have 
been. 

Another man was sitting on the end of the bench before the fire, 
with his legs stretched out before it. At the first glance Frank 
saw that this was a superior person to the others. He was 
dressed like the others in black-top boots, but, unlike the others, 
he was clean and neat. In fact the whole man was clean and 
neat, and had a clean- shaved face, and looked respectable, as far 
as outward appearances were concerned. The fourth man was the 
hut-keeper, a wicked-looking old villain, who w^as baking bread. 

Frank looked at the sleepy young man with the parrot, and said 
to himself, “There’s a bad case.” He looked at the fiash, 
yellow-haired young snob who was smoking, and said, “ There’s a 
worse.” He looked at the villainous grey-headed old hut-keeper, 
and said, “ There’s a hopeless case altogether.” But when he 
looked at the neatly dressed man, who sat in front of the fire, he 
said, “ That seems a more likely person. There is some sense of 
order in him, at all events. See what I can do with him.” 

He stood with his towering taU black figure in the doorway. 
The sleepy young man with the black hair sat up and looked at him 
in wonder, while his parrot whistled and chattered loudly. The 
yellow-haired young man looked round to see if he could get the 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


231 


others to join him in a laugh. The hut-keeper said, “ Oh, h — ! ” 
and attended once more to the cooking ; hut the neat-looking man 
rose up, and gave Frank courteously “ Good day.” 

“ I am a clergyman,” said Frank, “ come to pay you a visit, if 
you will allow me.” 

Black-hair looks as if astonishment were a new sensation to 
him, and he was determined to have the most of it. Meanwhile, 
little parrot taking advantage of his absence of mind, clambers up 
his breast and nips off a shirt-button, which he holds in his claw, 
pretending it is immensely good to eat. Hut-keeper clatters pots 
and pans, while Yellow-hair lies down whistling insolently. These 
last two seemed inclined to constitute themselves his Majesty’s Op- 
position in the present matter, while Black-hair and the neat man 
are evidently inclined towards Frank. There lay a boot in front 
of the fire, which the neat man, without warning, seized and hurled 
at Yellow-hair, with such skill and precision that the young fellow 
started upright in bed and demanded, with many verbs and adjec- 
tives, what he meant by that ? 

“ I’ll teach you to whistle when a gentleman comes into the hut 
— you Possumguts ! Lie down now, wiU you ? ’ ’ 

Yellow-hair lay down, and there was no more trouble with him. 
Hut-keeper, too, seeing how matters were going, left off clattering 
his pots, and Frank was master of the field. 

“Very glad to see you, sir,” says the neat man; “very 
seldom we get a visit from a gentleman in a black coat, I assure 

Frank shook hands with him and thanked him, and then, turning 
suddenly upon Black-hair, who was sitting with his bird on his 
knee, one leg out of his bunk, and his great black vacant eyes 
fixed on Frank, said, — 

“ What an exceedingly beautiful bird you have got there ! Pray, 
what do you call it ? ” 

Now it so happened that Black-hair had been vacantly wonder- 
ing to himself whether Frank’s black coat would meet across his 
stomach, or whether the lower buttons and buttonholes were 
“ dummies.” So that when Frank turned suddenly upon him he 
was, as it were, caught in the fact, and could only reply in a guilty 
whisper, “ Mountain blue.” 

“ Will he talk ? ” asked Frank. 

“ Whistle,” says Black-hair, still in a whisper, and then, clear- 
ing his throat continued, in his natural tone, “ Whistle beautiful. 
Black fellows get ’em young out of the dead trees. I’ll give you 
this one if you’ve a mind.” 

Frank couldn’t think of it ; but could Black-hair get him a 


232 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


young cockatoo, and leave it with Mr. Sam Buckley for trans- 
mission ? — would be exceedingly obliged. 

Yes, Black-hair could. Thinks, too, what a pleasant sort of 
chap this parson was. “ Will get him a cockatoo certainly.” 

Then Frank asks, may he read them a bit out of the Bible, and 
neat man says they will he highly honoured. And Black-hair gets 
out of his hunk and sits listening in a decently respectful way. 
Opposition are by no means won over. The old hut-keeper sits 
sulkily smoking, and the yellow-haired man lies in his hunk with 
his hack towards them. Lee had meanwhile come in, and, after 
recognitions from those inside, sat quietly down close to the door. 
Frank took for a text, ‘‘Servants, obey your masters,” and 
preached them a sermon about the relations of master and 
servant, homely, plain, sensible and interesting, and had succeeded 
in awakening the whole attention and interest of the three who 
were listening, when the door was opened and a man looked in. 

Lee was next the door, and cast his eyes upon the new comer. 
No sooner had their eyes met than he uttered a loud oath, and, 
going out with the stranger, shut the door after him. 

“ What can be the matter with our friend, I wonder ? ” asked 
Frank. “ He seems much disturbed.” 

The neat man went to the door and opened it. Lee and the 
man who had opened the door were standing with their backs 
towards them, talking earnestly. Lee soon came back without a 
word, and, having caught and saddled his horse, rode away with 
the stranger, who was on foot. He was a large, shabbily-dressed 
man, with black curly hair ; this was all they could see of him, 
for his hack was always towards them. 

“ Never saw Bill take on like that before,” said the neat man. 
“ That’s one of his old pals, I reckon. He ain’t very fond of 
meeting any of ’em, you see, since he has been on the square. 
The best friends in prison, sir, are the worst friends out.” 

“ Were you ever in prison, then ? ” said Frank. 

“Lord bless you!” said the other, laughing, “ I was lagged 
for forgery.” 

“ I mil make you another visit if I can,” said Frank. “I am 
much obliged to you for the peiience with which you heard me.” 

The other ran out to get his horse for him, and had it saddled 
in no time. “ If you will send a parson round,” he said, when 
Frank was mounted, “ I will ensure him a hearing, and good bye, 
sir.” 

“ And God speed you,” says Frank. But, lo 1 as he turned to 
ride away. Black-hair the sleepy-headed comes to the hut-door, 
looking important, and says, “ Hi ! ” Frank is glad of this, for 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


233 


he likes the stupid-looking young fellow better than he fancied he 
would have done at first, and says to himself, “ There’s the 
making of a man in that fellow, unless I am mistaken.” So he 
turns politely to meet him, and, as he comes towards him, remarks 
what a fine, good-humoured young fellow he is. Black-hair 
ranges alongside, and, putting his hand on the horse’s neck, says, 
mysteriously — 

“ Would you like a native companion ? ” * 

“ Too big to carry, isn’t it ? ” says Frank. 

“ I’ll tie his wings together, and send him down on the ration 
dray,” says Black-hair. ‘‘You’ll come round and see us again, 
will you ? ’ ’ 

So Frank fares back to Toonarbin, wondering wnere Lee has 
gone. But Black-hair goes back into the hut, and taking his 
parrot from the bed-place, puts it on his shoulder, and sits rubbing 
his knees before the fire. YeUow-hair and the hut-keeper are now 
in loud conversation, and the former is asking, in a loud authori- 
tative tone (the neat man being outside), “ whether a chap is to be 

hunted and badgered out of his bed by a parcel of parsons ? ” 

To which Hut-keeper says, “ No, by ! A man might as 

well be in barracks again.” Yellow-hair, morally comforted and 
sustained by this opinion, is proceeding to say, that, for his part, 
a parson is a useless sort of animal in general, who gets his living 
by frightening old women, but that this particular parson is an 
unusually offensive specimen, and that there is nothing in this 
world that he (Yellow-hair) would like better than to have him out 
in front of the house for five minutes, and see who was best man, 
— when Black-hair, usually a taciturn, peaceable fellow, astonishes 
the pair by turning his black eyes on the other, and saying, with 
lowering eyebrows, — 

“You d d humbug! Talk about fighting him! Always 

talk about fighting a chap when he’s out of the way, when you 
know you’ve no more fight in you than a bronsewing. Why, he’d 
kill you, if you only waited for him to hit you ! And see here : if 
you don’t stop your jaw about him, yeu’U have to fight me, and 
that’s a little more than you’re game for, I’m thinking.” 

This last was told me by the man distinguished above as “ the 
neat man,” who was standing outside, and heard the whole. 

But Frank arrived in due time at Toonarbin, and found all there 
much as he had left it, save that Mary Hawker had recovered her 
serenity, and was standing expecting him, with Charles by her 

* A great crane, common in Australia. A capital pet, though danger- 
ous among children ; having that strange propensity common to all the 
cranes and herons, of attacking the eye. 


234 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


side. Sam asked him, “ Where was Lee ? ” and Frank, thinking 
more of other things, said he had left him at the hut, not thinking 
it worth while to mention the circumstance of his having been 
called out — a circumstance which became of great significance 
hereafter ; for, though we never found out for certain who the man 
was, we came in the end to have strong suspicions. 

However, as I said, all clouds had cleared from the Toonarhin 
atmosphere, and, after a pleasanF meal, Frank, Major and Mrs. 
Buckley, Sam, and Charles Hawker, rode home to Baroona under 
the forest arches, and reached the house in the gathering twilight. 

The boys were staying behind at the stable as the three elders 
entered the darkened drawing-room. A figure was in one of the 
easy chairs by the fire — a figure which seemed familiar there, 
though the Major could not make out w^ho it w'as until a well- 
known voice said, — 

“ Is that you, Buckley ? ” 

It was the Doctor. They both welcomed him warmly home, 
and waited in the gloom for him to speak, hut only saw that he 
had bent down his head over the fire. 

“ Are you ill. Doctor ? ” said Mrs. Buckley. 

“ Sound in wind and limb, my dear madam, hut rather sad at 
heart. We have had some very severe black fighting, and W'e 
have lost a kind old friend — James Stockbridge.” 

“ Is he wounded, then?” said Mrs. Buckley. 

“Dead.” 

“ Dead ! ” 

“ Speared in the side. Rolled off* his horse, and was gone in 
five minutes.” 

“ Oh, poor James ! ” cried Mrs. Buckley. “ He, of all men ! 
The man who was their champion. To think that he, of all men, 
should end in that way ! ” 

-- ■Jf -fr -j;- 4f 

Charles Hawker rode home that night, and w^ent into the room 
where his mother was. She was sitting sewing by the fire, and 
looked up to welcome him home. 

“ Mother,” said he, “ there is bad news to tell. We have lost 
a good friend. James Stockbridge is killed by the blacks on the 
Macquarrie.” 

She answered not a word, hut buried her face in her hands, and 
very shortly rose and left the room. When she was alone, she 
began moaning to herself, and saying, — 

“ Some more fruit of the old cursed tree ! If he had never seen 
me, he would have died at home, among his old friends, in a ripe, 
honoured old age.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


235 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE GOLDEN VINEYARD. 

On a summer’s morning, almost before the dew had left tlie grass 
on the north side of the forest, or the belated opossum had gone to 
his nest, in fact just as the East was blazing with its brightest fire, 
Sam started off for a pleasant canter through the forest, to visit one 
of their out- station huts, which lay away among the ranges, and 
which was called, from some old arrangement, now fallen into dis- 
use, “ the heifer station.” 

There was the hut, seen suddenly down a beautiful green vista 
in the forest, the chimney smoking cheerily. “ What a pretty 
contrast of colours ! ” says Sam, in a humour for enjoying every- 
thing. ‘‘ Dark-brown hut among the green shrubs, and blue smoke 
rising above all ; prettily, too, that smoke hangs about the foliage 
this still morning, quite in festoons. There’s Matt at the door ! ” 

A lean, long-legged, clever-looking fellow, rather wide at the 
knees, with a brown complexion, and not unpleasant expression of 
face, stood before the door plaiting a cracker for his stockwhip. 
He looked pleased when he saw Sam, and indeed it must be a surly 
feUow indeed, who did not greet Sam’s honest face with a smile. 
Never a dog but wagged his tail when he caught Sam’s eye. 

“ You’re abroad early this morning, sir,” said the man ; “ nothing 
the matter, is there, sir? ” 

“ Nothing,” said Sam, “ save that one of Captain Brentwood’s 
bulls is missing, and I came out to tell you to have an extra look 
round.” 

“ I’ll attend to it, sir.” 

“ Hi ! Matt,” said Sam, “ you look uncommonly smart.” 

Matt bent down his head, and laughed, in a rather sheepish 
sort of way. 

‘‘ Well, you see, sir, I was coming in to the home station to see 
if the Major could spare me for a few days.” 

“ What, going a courting, eh ? Well, I’U make that all right 
for you. Who is the lady, — eh ? ” 

“ Why, it’s Elsy Macdonald, I believe.” 

‘‘Elsy Macdonald ! ” said Sam. 

“ Ay, yes, sir. I know what you mean, but she ain’t like her 
sister ; and that was more Mr. Charles Hawker’s fault than her 
own. No ; Elsy is good enough for me, and I’m not very badly 
off, and begin to fancy I would like some better sort of welcome in 


236 


THE EE COLLECTIONS OF 


the evening than what a cranky old brute of a hut-keeper can give 
me. So I think I shall bring her home.” 

“I wish you well, Matt,” said Sam; “I hope you are not 
going to leave us, though.” 

“ No fear, sir ; Major Buckley is too good a master for that ! ” 

“Well, I’ll get the hut coopered up a bit for you, and you 
shall be as comfortable as circumstances will permit. Grood 
morning ! ” 

“ Grood morning, sir ; I hope I may see you happily married 
yourself some of these days.” 

Sam laughed ; “ that would be a fine joke,” he thought, “ but 
why shouldn’t it be, eh ? I suppose it must come some time or 
another. I shall begin to look out ; I don’t expect I shall be very 
easily suited. Heigh ho ! ” 

I expect, however, Mr. Sam, that you are just in the state of 
mind to fall headlong in love with the first girl you meet with a 
nose on her face ; let us hope, therefore, that she may be eligible. 

But here is home again, and here is the father standing majestic 
and broad in the verandah, and the mother with her arm round 
his neck, both waiting to give him a hearty morning’s welcome. 
And there is Doctor Mulhaus kneeling in spectacles before his new 
Grevillea Victoriae, the first bud of which is bursting into life ; and 
the dogs catch sight of him and dash forward, barking joyfully ; 
and as the ready groom takes his horse, and the fat housekeeper 
looks out all smiles, and retreats to send in breakfast, Sam thinks 
to himself, that he could not leave his home and people, not for 
the best wife in broad Australia ; but then, you see, he knew no 
better. 

“What makes my boy look so happy this morning?” asked 
his mother. “ Has the bay mare foaled, or have you negotiated 
James Brentwood’s young dog ? Tell us, that we may 
participate.” 

“ None of these things have happened, mother; but I feel in 
rather a holiday humour, and I’m thinking of going down to 
Garoopna this morning, and spending a day or two with Jim.” 

“ I will throw a shoe after you for luck,” said his mother. 
“ See, the Doctor is calling you.” 

Sam went to the Doctor, who was intent on his flower. “ Look 
here, my boy ; here is something new : the handsomest of the 
Grevilleas, as I live. It has opened since I was here.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Sam,’ “ this is the one that came from the Quartz 
Ranges, last year, is it not ? It has not flowered with you 
before.” 

“ If Linnaeus wept and prayed over the first piece of English 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


237 


furze which he saw,” said the Doctor, “ what everlasting smelling- 
bottle hysterics he would have gone into in this country ! I don’t 
sympathise with his tears much, though, myself ; though a new 
flower is a source of the greatest pleasure to me.” 

“And so you are going to Garoopna, Sam?” said his father, 
at breakfast. “ Have you heard, my dear, when the young lady 
is to come home ? ” 

“ Next month, I understand, my dear,” said Mrs. Buckley. 
“ When she does come I shall go over and make her a visit.” 

“ What is her name, by the bye ? ” asked the Doctor. 

“Alice.” 

So, behold Sam starting for his visit. The very Brummel of 
bush-dandies. Hunt might have made his well-fitting cord 
breeches, Hoby might have made those black-top boots, and 
Chifney might have worn them before royalty, and not been 
ashamed. It is too hot for coat or waistcoat ; so he wears his 
snow-white shirt, topped by a blue “bird’s-eye-handkerchief,” and 
keeps his coat in his valise, to be used as occasion shall require. 
His costume is completed with a cabbage-tree hat, neither too new 
nor too old ; light, shady, well- ventilated, and three pounds ten, 
the production, after months of labour, of a private in her 
Majesty’s Fortieth Regiment of Foot : not with long streaming 
ribands down his back, like a Pitt Street buUy, but with short and 
modest ones as becomes a gentleman, — altogether as fine a looking 
young fellow, as well dressed, and as well mounted too, as you will 
find on the country side. 

Let me say a word about his horse, too ; horse Widderin. 
None ever knew what that horse had cost Sam. The Major even had 
a delicacy about asking. I can only discover by inquiry that, at 
one time, about a year before this, there came to the Major’s a 
traveller, an Irishman by nation, who bored them all by talking 
about a certain “ Arcturus ” colt, which had been dropped to a 
happy proprietor by his mare “ Larkspur,” among the Shoalhaveii 
gullies ; described by him as a colt the like of which was never 
seen before ; as indeed he should be, for his sire Arcturus, as aU 
the world knows, was bought up by a great Hunter-river horse- 

breeder from the Duke of C ; while his dam. Larkspur, had 

for grandsire the great Bombshell himself. What more would 
you have than that, unless yon would like to drive Veno in our 
dog-cart ? However, it so happened that, soon after the Irish- 
man’s visit, Sam went away on a journey, and came back riding a 
new horse ; which when the Major saw, he whistled, but discreetly 
said nothing. A very large colt he was, with a neck like a rain- 
bow, set into a splendid shoulder, and a marvellous way of 


238 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


throwing his logs out | — vory dark chostnut in colour, almost 
black, with longish ears, and an eye so full, honest, and impudent, 
that it made you laugh in his face. Widderin, Sam said, was his 
name, price and history being suppressed ; called after Mount 
Widderin, to the northward there, whose loftiest sublime summit 
bends over like a horse’s neck, with two peaked crags for ears. 
And the Major comes somehow to connect this horse with the 
Arcturus colt mentioned by our Irish friend, and observes that 
Sam takes to wearing his old clothes for a twelvemonth, and 
never seems to have any ready money. We shall see some day 
whether or no this horse will carry Sam ten miles, if required, on 
such direful emergency too as falls to the lot of few men. However, 
this is all to come. Now in holiday clothes and in holiday mind 
the two noble animals cross the paddock, and so down by the fence 
towards the river ; towards the old gravel ford you may remember 
years ago. Here is the old flood, spouting and streaming as of 
yore, through the basalt pillars. There stand the three fern trees, 
too, above the dark scrub on the island. Now up the rock bank, 
and away across the breezy plains due North. 

Brushing through the long grass tussocks, he goes his way 
singing, his dog Rover careering joyously before him. The horse 
is clearly for a gallop, but it is too hot to-day. The tall, flat- 
topped volcanic hill which hung before him like a grey faint cloud 
when he started, now rears its fluted columns overhead, and now is 
getting dim again behind him. But ere noon is high he once more 
hears the brawling river beneath his feet, and Garoopna is before 
him on the opposite bank. 

The river, as it left Major Buckley’s at Baroona, made a sudden 
bend to the west, a great arc, including with its minor windings 
nearly twenty-five miles, over the chord of which arc Sam had now 
been riding, making, from point to point, ten miles or thereabouts. 
The Mayfords’ station, also, lay to the left of him, being cn the 
curved side of the arc, about five miles from Baroona. The reader 
may, if he please, remember this. 

Garoopna is an exceedingly pretty station ; in fact, one of the 
most beautiful I have ever seen. It stands at a point where the 
vast forests, which surround the mountains in a belt, from ten to 
twenty miles broad, run down into the plains and touch the river. 
As at Baroona, the stream runs in through a deep cleft in the table 
land, which here, though precipitous on the eastern bank, on the 
western breaks away into a small natural amphitheatre bordered 
by fine hanging woods, just in advance of which, about two hundred 
yards from the river, stands the house, a long, low building densely 
covered with creepers of aU sorts, and fronted by a beautiful garden. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


239 


Right and left of it are the woolsheds, sheepyards, stockyards, men’s 
huts, &c. ; giving it almost the appearance of a little village ; and 
behind the wooded ranges begin to rise, in some places broken beauti- 
fully by sheer scarps of grey rock. The forest crosses the river a 
little way ; so that Sam, gradually descending from the plains to 
cross, went the last quarter of a mile through a shady sandy forest 
tract, fringed with bracken, which led down to a broad crossing 
place, where the river sparkled under tall over- arching red gums 
and box-trees ; and then following the garden fence, found himself 
before a deep cool-looking porch, in a broad neatly-kept courtyard 
behind the house. 

A groom* came out and took his horse. Rover has enough to 
do ; for there are three or four sheep dogs in the yard, who walk 
round him on tiptoe, slowly, with their frills out and their tails 
arched, growling. Rover, also, walks about on tiptoe, arches his 
tail, and growls with the best of them. He knows that the 
slightest mistake would be disastrous, and so manceuvres till he 
gets to the porch, where, a deal of gravel having been kicked back- 
wards, in the same way as the ancients poured out their wine when 
they drank a toast, or else (as I think is more probable) as a symbol 
that animosities were to be buried. Rover is admitted as a guest, 
and Sam feels it safe to enter the house. 

A cool, shady hall, hung round with coats, hats, stockwhips ; a 
,.gun in the comer, and on a slab, the most beautiful nosegay you 
can imagine. Remarkable that for a bachelor’s establishment ; — 
but there is no time to think about it, for a tall, comfortable -looking 
housekeeper, whom Sam has never seen before, comes in from the 
kitchen and curtseys. 

“ Captain Brentwood not at home, is he ? ” said Sam. 

“ No, sir ! Away on the run with Mr. James.” 

‘‘ Oh ! very well,” says Sam ; “ I am going to stay a few days.” 

“ Very well, sir ; will you take anything before lunch ? ” 
Nothing, thank you.” 

‘‘ Miss Alice is somewhere about, sir. I expect her in every 
minute.” 

“ Miss Alice ! ” says Sam, astonished. “ Is she come home ? ” 

“ Came home last week, sir. WiU you walk in and sit down ? ” 

Sam got his coat out of his valise and went in. He wished that 
he had put on his plain blue necktie instead of the blue one with 

* Do not let Bob or Tom, when they read this book in the sixteenth 
edition, before the harness-room stove, suppose that an Australian groom 
resembles in any way the very neat young man who follows the young 
ladies in their canters. The dirtiest helper at a university stable would 
Qome nearer the mark. 


240 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


white spots. He would have liked to have worn his new yellow 
riding-trousers, instead of breeches and hoots. He hoped his hair 
was in order, and tried to arrange his handsome brown curls with- 
out a glass, hut, in the end, concluded that things could not he 
mended now, so he looked round the room. 

What a charming room it was ! A couple of good pictures, and 
several fine prints on the walls. Over the chimneypiece, a sword, 
and an old gold-laced cap, on which Sam looked with reverence. 
Three French windows opened on to a dark cool verandah, beyond 
which was a beautiful flower-garden. The floor of the room, 
uncarpeted, shone dark and smooth, and the air was perfumed by 
vases of magnificent flowers, a hundred pounds worth of them, I 
should say, if you could have taken them to Covent-garden that 
December morning. But what took Sam’s attention more than 
anything was an open piano, in a shady recess, and on the keys a 
little fairy white glove. 

“ White kid gloves, eh, my lady ? ” says Sam ; “ that don’t look 
well.” So he looked through the book-shelves, and, having lighted 
on “Boswell’s Johnson,” proceeded into the verandah. A collie 
she-dog was lying at one end, who hanged her tail against the floor 
in welcome, hut was too utterly prostrated by the heat and by the 
persecution of her puppy to get up and make friends. The pup, 
however, a hall of curly black wool, with a brown-striped face, who 
was sitting on the top of her with his head on one side, seemed to 
conclude that a game of play was to be got out of Sam, and came 
blundering towards him ; hut Sam was, by this time, deep in a 
luxurious rocking-chair, so the puppy stopped half way, and did 
battle with a great black tarantula spider who happened to be 
abroad on business. 

Sam went to the club with his immortal namesake, bullied 
Bennet Langton, argued with Beauclerk, put down Goldsmith, and 
extinguished Boswell. But it was too hot to read ; so he let the 
book fall on his lap, and lay a dreaming. 

What a delicious verandah is this to dream in ! Through the 
tangled passion-flowers, jessamines and magnolias, what a soft 
gleam of bright hazy distance, over the plains and far away ! 
The deep river-glen cleaves the table-land, which, here and there, 
swells into breezy downs. Beyond, miles away to the North, is a 
great forest-barrier, above which there is a blaze of late snow, 
sending strange light aloft into the burning haze. All this is seen 
through an arch in the dark mass of 'verdure which clothes the 
trellis-work, only broken through in this one place, as though to 
make a frame for the picture. He leans back, and gives himself 
up to watching trifles. 


GEOFFBY HAMLYN. 


241 


See here. A magpie conies furtively out of the house with a key 
in his mouth, and seeing Sam, stops to consider if he is likely to 
betray him. On the wdiole, he thinks not ; so he hides the key in 
a crevice, and whistles a tune. 

Now enters a cockatoo, waddling along comfortably and talking 
to himself. He tries to enter into conversation with the magpie, 
who, however, cuts him dead, and walks off to look at the prospect. 

Flop ! flop ! A great foolish -looking kangaroo comes through 
the house and peers round him. The cockatoo addresses a few 
remarks to him, which he takes no notice of, but goes blundering 
out into the garden, right over the contemplative magpie, who gives 
iiim two or three indignant pecks on his clumsy feet, and sends him 
flying do’wn the gravel walk. 

Two bright- eyed little kangaroo rats come out of their box peering 
and blinking. The cockatoo finds an audience in them, for they 
sit listening to him, now and then catching a flea, or rubbing the 
backs of their heads with their fore-paws. But a buck ’possum, 
who stealthily descends by a pillar from unknown realms of mis- 
chief on the top of the house, evidently discredits cockey’s stories, 
and departs down the garden to see if he can find something to 
eat. 

An old cat comes up the garden walk, accompanied by a wicked 
kitten, who ambushes round the comer of the flower-bed, and pounces 
out on her mother, knocking her down and severely maltreating her. 
But the old lady picks herself up without a murmur, and comes into 
the verandah followed by her unnatural offspring, ready for any 
mischief. The kangaroo rats retire into their box, and the cockatoo, 
rather nervous, lays himself out to be agreeable. 

But the puppy, born under an unlucky star, who has been 
watching all these things from behind his mother, thinks at last, 
“ Here is some one to play with,” so he comes staggering forth 
and challenges the kitten to a lark. 

She receives him with every symptom of disgust and abhorrence, 
but he, regardless of all spitting, and tail swelling, rolls her over, 
spurring and swearing, and makes believe he wiU worry her to 
death. Her scratching and biting tell but little on his woolly hide, 
and he seems to have the best of it out and out, till a new ally 
appears unexpectedly, and quite turns the tables. The magpie 
hops up, ranges alongside of the combatants, and catches the puppy 
such a dig over the tail as sends him howling to his mother with 
a flea in his ear. 

Sam lay sleepily amused. by this little drama ; then he looked at 
the bright green arch which separated the dark verandah from the 
bright hot garden. The arch was darkened, and looking he saw 

17 


242 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


something which made his heart move strangely, something that 
he has not forgotten yet, and never will. 

Under the arch between the sunlight and the shade, bareheaded, 
dressed in white, stood a girl, so amazingly beautiful, that Sam 
wondered for a few moments whether he was asleep or awake. 
Her hat, which she had just taken off, hung on her left arm, and 
with her delicate right hand she arranged a vagrant tendril of the 
passion-flower, which in its luxuriant growth had broken hounds 
and fallen from its place above. — A girl so beautiful that I in all 
my life never saw her superior. They showed me the other day, 
in a carriage in the park, one they said was the most beautiful girl 
in England, a descendant of I know not how many noblemen. But, 
looking back to the times I am speaking of now, I said at once 
and decidedly, “ Alice Brentwood twenty years ago was more 
beautiful than she.” 

A Norman style of beauty, I believe you would call it. Light 
hair, deep brilliant blue eyes, and a very fair complexion. Beauty 
and high-bred grace in every limb and every motion. She stood 
there an instant on tiptoe, with the sunlight full upon her, while 
Sam, buried in gloom, had time for a delighted look, before she 
stepped into the verandah and saw him. 

She floated towards him through the deep shadow. “ I think,” 
she said in the sweetest, most musical little voice, “ that you are 
Mr. Buckley. If so, you are a very old friend of mine by report.” 
So she held out her little hand, and with one bold kind look from 
the happy eyes, finished Sam for life. 

Father and mother, retire into the chimney corner and watch. 
Your day is done. Doctor Mulhaus, put your good advice into your 
pocket and smoke your pipe. Here is one who can exert a greater 
power for good or evil than all of you put together. It was written 
of old, — “ A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto 
his— — ” Hallo ! I am getting on rather fast, I am afraid. 

He had risen to meet her. “ And you. Miss Brentwood,” he 
said, “ are tolerably well known to me. Do you know now that I 
believe by an exertion of memory I could tell you the year and the 
month when you began to learn the harp ? My dear old friend 
Jim has kept me quite au fait with all your accomplishments.” 

“ I hope you are not disappointed in me,” said Alice, laughing. 

“No,” said Sam. “ I think rather the contrary. Are you ? ” 

“ I have not had time to tell yet,” she said. “ I will see how 
you behave at lunch, which we shall have in half an hour tete-d- 
tete. You have been often here before, I believe ? Do you see 
much change ? ” 

“ Not much. I noticed a new piano, and a little glove that 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


243 


I had never seen before. Jim’s menagerie of wild beasts is as 
numerous as ever, I see. He would have liked to be in Noah’s 
Ark.” 

“ And so would you and I, Mr. Buckley,” she answered, laugh- 
ing, ‘‘ if we had been caught in the flood.” 

Good gracious ! Think of being in Noah’s Ark with her ! 

“ You find them a little troublesome, don’t vou, Miss Brent- 
wood ? ” 

“ Well, it requires a good deal of administrative faculty to keep 
the kitten and the puppy from open collision, and to prevent the 
magpie from pecking out the cockatoo’s eye and hiding it in the 
flower bed. Last Sunday morning he (the magpie) got into my 
father’s room, and stole thirty-one shillings and sixpence. We 
got it all back hut half a sovereign, and that we shall never sec.” 

The bird thus alluded to broke into a gush of melody, so rich, 
full, and metallic, that they both turned to look at him. Having 
attracted attention, he began dancing, crooning a little song to 
himself, as though he would say, “ I know where it is.” j^id 
lastly he puffed out his breast, put hack his bill, and swore two 
or three oaths that would have disgraced a London scavenger, 
with such remarkable distinctness too, that there was no mis- 
understanding him ; so Sam’s affectation of not having caught 
what the bird said, was a dead failure. 

“ Mr. Buckley,” said she, “ if you will excuse me I will go and 
see about lunch. Can you amuse yourself there for half an 
hour ? ” Well, he would try. So he retired again to the rocking- 
chair, about ten years older than when he rose from it. For he 
had grown from a hoy into a man. 

He had fallen over head and ears in love, and all in five minutes. 
Fallen deeply, seriously in love, to the exclusion of all other sub- 
lunary matters, before he had well had time to notice whether she 
spoke with an Irish brogue or a Scotch (happily she did neither). 
Sudden, you say : well, yes ; hut, in lat. 34°, and lower, whether 
in the southern or northern atmosphere, these sort of affairs come 
on with a rapidity and violence only equalled by the thunder-storms 
of those regions, and utterly surprising to you who perhaps read 
this hook in 52° north, or perhaps higher. I once went to a hall 
with as free-and-easy, heart-whole a young fellow as any I know, 
and agreed with him to stay half an hour, and then come away and 
play pool. In twenty-five minutes by my watch, which keeps time 
like a ship’s chronometer, that man was in the tragic or cut-throat 
stage of the passion with a pretty little thing of forty, a cattle- 
dealer’s widow, who stopped Ms pool-playing for a time, until she 
married the great ironmonger in George Street. Romeo and 


244 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


Juliet’s little matter was just as sudden, and very Australian in 
many points. Only mind, that Romeo, had he lived in Australia, 
instead of taking poison, would probably have 

“Took to drinking ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Baily,” 

for full twenty-four hours after the catastrophe. 

At least, such would have been the case in many instances, but 
not in all. With some men these suddenly-conceived passions last 
their lives, and, I should be inclined to say longer, were there not 
strong authority against it. 

But Sam ? He saw the last twinkle of her white gown dis- 
appear, and then leant back and tried to think. He could only 
say to himself, “ By Jove, I wonder if I can ever bring her to like 
me. I wish I had known she wns here ; I’d have dressed myself 
better. She is a precious superior girl. She might come to like 
me in time. Heigh ho ! ” 

The idea of his having a rival, or of any third person stepping 
in between him and the young lady to whom he had thrown his 
handkerchief, never entered into his Sultanship’s head. Also, 
when he came to think about it, he really saw no reason why she 
should not be brought to think well of him. “ As well me as 
another,” said he to himself; “that’s wdiere it is. She must 
marry somebody, you know ! ” 

Why is she gone so long ? He begins to doubt whether he has 
not after all been asleep and dreaming. There she comes again, 
however, for the arch under the creepers is darkened again, and 
he looks up with a pleasant smile upon his face to greet her. 

God save us ! What imp’s trick is this ? There, in the porch, 
in the bright sun, where she stood not an hour ago in all her 
beauty and grace, stands a hideous, old savage, black as Tophet, 
grinning ; showing the sharp gap-teeth in her apish jaws, her lean 
legs shaking with old age and rheumatism. 

The collie shakes out her frill, and, raising the hair all down 
her back, stands grinning and snarling, while her puppy barks 
potvaliantly between her legs. The little kangaroo rats ensconce 
themselves once more in their box, and gaze out amazed from 
their bright little eyes. The cockatoo hooks and clambers up to 
a safe place in the trellis, and Sam, after standing thunder-struck 
for a moment, asks, what she wants ? 

“ Make a light,” * says the old girl, in a pathetic squeak. 

* “Make a light,” in blackfellow’s gibberish, means simply “See.” 
Here it means, “ I’m only come to see how you are getting on,” or some- 
thing of that sort. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


245 


Further answer she makes none, hut squats down outside, and 
begins a petulant whine : sure sign that she has a tale of woe to 
unfold, and is going to ask for something. 

“ Can that creature,” thinks Sam, “be of the same species as 
the beautiful Alice Brentwood ? Surely not ! There seems as 
much difference between them as between an angel and an ordinary 
good woman.” Hard to believe, truly, Sam ; hut perhaps, in 
some of the great Euroj)ean cities, or even nearer home, in some 
of the prison barracks, you may chance to find a white woman or 
two fallen as low as that poor, starved, ill-treated, filthy old 
savage ! 

Alice comes out once more, and brings sunshine with her. She 
goes up to the old luhra with a look of divine compassion on her 
beautiful face ; the old woman’s whine grows louder as she rocks 
herself to and fro. “ Yah marah. Yah hoorah. Oh hoora Yah ! 
Yah Ma ! ” 

“What! old Sally ! ” says the beautiful girl. “What is the 
matter ? Have you been getting waddy again ? ” 

“ Baal 1 ” says she, with a petulant hurst of grief. 

“ What is it, then ? ” says Alice. “ Where is the gown I gave 
you?” 

Alice had evidently vibrated the right chord. The “ Yarah 
Moorah ” coronach was begun again ; and then suddenly, as if her 
indignation had burst bounds, she started off with a shrillness and 
rapidity astonishing to one not accustomed to blackfellows, into 
something like the following: “Oh Yah (very loud), oh Mali I 
Barkmaburrawurrah, Barkmamurraliwurrah Oh Ya Barknianurra- 
wah Yee (in a scream.’ Then a pause). Oh Mooroo (pause). 
Oh hinaray (pause). Oh Barknamurrwurrah Yee I ” 

Alice looked as if she understood every word of it, and waited 
till the poor old soul had “ blown olf the steam,” and then asked 
again : 

“ And what has become of the gown, Sally ? ” 

“ Oh dear ! Young lubra, Betty (big thief that one) tear it up 
and stick it along a fire. Oh, plenty cold this old woman. Oh, 
plenty hungry this old woman. Oh, Yarah Moorah,” &c. 

“ There ! go round to the kitchen,” said Alice, “ and get some- 
thing to eat. Is it not abominable, Mr. Buckley ? I cannot give 
anything to this old woman but the young lubras take it from her. 
However, I will ‘ put the screw on them.’ They shall have nothing 
from me till they treat her better. It goes to my heart to see a 
woman of that age, with nothing to look forward to but kicks and 
blows. I have tried hard to make her understand something of 
the next world : but I can’t get it out of her head that when she 


246 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


dies she will go across the water and come back a young white 
woman with plenty of money. Mr. Sandford, the missionary, says 
he has never found one who could he made to comprehend the 
existence of God. However, I came to call you to lunch ; will you 
give me your arm ? ” 

Such a self-possessed, intrepid little maiden, not a bit afraid of 
him, but seeming to understand and trust him so thoroughly. Not 
all the mock-modesty and blushing in the world would have won 
him half so surely, as did her bold, quiet, honest look. Although 
a very young man, and an inexperienced, Sam could see what a 
candid, honest, gentle soul looked at him from those kind blue 
eyes ; and she, too, saw something in Sam’s broad noble face 
which attracted her marvellously, and in all innocence she told 
him so, plump and plain, as they were going into the house. 

“ I fancy I shall like you very much, Mr. Buckley. We ought 
to he good friends, you know ; your father saved the lives of my 
father and uncle.” . - 

“ I never heard of that before,” sai(LSam. 

‘‘ I dare say not,” said Alice. “ Your father is not the man 
to speak of his own noble deeds ; yet he ran out of his square and 
pulled my father and uncle almost from under the hoofs of the 
French cavalry at Waterloo. It makes my cheeks tingle to tell of 
it now.” 

Indeed it did. Sam thought that if it brought such a beautiful 
flush to her face, and such a flash from her eyes, whenever she 
told it, that he would get her to tell it again more than once. 

But lunch ! Don’t let us staiwe our new pair of turtle-doves, 
in the outset. Sam is but a growing lad, and needs carbon for 
his muscles, lime for his bones, and all that sort of thing ; a glass 
of wine won’t do him any harm either, and let us hope that his 
new passion is not of such lamentable sort as to prevent his using 
a knife and fork with credit and satisfaction to himself. 

Here, in the dark, cool parlour, stands a banquet for the gods, 
white damask, pretty bright china, and clean silver. In the 
corner of the table is a frosted claret-jug, standing, with freezing 
politeness, upright, his hand on his hip, waiting to be poured out. 
In the centre, the grandfather of water-melons, half-hidden by 
peaches and pomegranates, the whole heaped over by, a confusion 
of ruby cherries (oh, for Lance to paint it !). Are you hungry, 
though ? If so, here is a mould of potted-head and a cold wiki 
duck, while, on the sideboard, I see a bottle of pale ale. My 
brother, let us breakfast in Scotland, lunch in Australia, and dine 
in France, till our lives’ end. 

And the banquet being over, she said, as pleasantly as possible. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


247 


“ Now, I know you want to smoke in the verandah. For my 
part, I should like to bring my work there and sit with you, hut, 
if you had rather not have me, you have only to say that ‘ you 
could not think,’ &c., &c., and I will obediently take myself off.” 

But Sam didn’t say that. He said that he couldn’t conceive 
anything more delightful, if she was quite sure she did not mind. 

Not she, indeed ! So she brought her work out, and they sat 
together. A cool wind came up, bending the flowers, swinging 
the creepers to and fro, and raising a rushing sound, like the sea, 
from the distant forest. The magpie having been down the garden 
when the wind came on, and having been blown over, soon joined 
them in a very captious frame of mind ; and, when Alice dropped 
a hall of red worsted, he seized it as lawful prize, and away in the 
house with a hop and a flutter. So both Sam and Alice had to 
go after him, and hunt him under the sofa, and the bird, finding 
that he must yield, dropped the hall suddenly, and gave Sam two 
vicious digs on the fingers to remember him by. But when Alice 
just touched his hand in taking it from him, he wished it had been 
a whipsnake instead of a magpie. 

So the ball of worsted was recovered, and they sat down again. 
He watched her nimble fingers on the delicate embroidery ; he 
glanced at her quiet face and down-turned eyelids, wondering who 
she was thinking of. Suddenly she raised her eyes and caught 
him in the fact. You could not swear she blushed ; it might 
only he a trifling reflection from one of the red China roses that 
hung between her and the sun ; yet, when she spoke, it was not 
quite with her usual self-possession ; a little hurriedly perhaps. 

‘‘ Are you going to he a soldier, as your father was ? ” 

Sam had thought for an instant of saying “ yes,” and then to 
prove his words true of going to Sy^ey, and enlisting in the 
“ Half Hundred.” * Truth, however, prompting him to say 
“no,” he compromised the matter by saying he had not thought 
of it. 

“ I am rather glad of that, do you know,” she said. “ Unless 
in India, now, a man had better he anything than a soldier. I 
am afraid my brother Jim will he begging for a commission some 
day. I wish he would stay quietly at home.” 

That was comforting. He gave up all thoughts of enlisting at 
once. But now the afternoon shadows were beginning to slant 
longer and longer, and it was nearly time that the Captain and 
Jim should make their appearance. So Alice proposed to walk 
out to meet them, and as Sam did not say no, they went forth 
together. 


The fiftieth, buffs. 


248 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


Down the garden, faint with the afternoon scents of the flowers 
before the western sun, among petunias and roses, oleander and 
magnolia ; here a towering Indian lily, there a thicket of scarlet 
geranium and fuchsia. By shady young orange trees, covered 
with fruit and blossom, between rows of trellised vines, bearing 
rich promise of a purple vintage. Among fig trees and pome- 
granates, and so leaving the garden, along the dry slippeiy grass, 
towards the hoarse rushing river, both silent till they reached it. 
There is a silence that is golden. 

They stood gazing on the foaming tide an instant, and then 
Alice said, — 

“ My father and Jim will come home by the track across there. 
Shall we cross and meet them ? We can get over just below.” 

A little lower down, all the river was collected into one head- 
long race ; and a giant tree, undermined by winter floods, had 
fallen from one bank to the other, oflering a giddy footway across 
the foaming water. 

“ Now,” said Alice, ‘‘ if you wiU go over, I will follow you.” 

So he ran across, and then looked back to see the beautiful 
figure tripping fearlessly over, with outstretched arms, and held 
out his great brown hand to take her tiny fingers as she stepped 
down from the upturned roots, on to the soft white sand. He 
would like to have taken them again, to help her up the bank, 
but she sprang up, like a deer, and would not give him the 
opportunity. Then they had a merry laugh at tlie magpie, who 
had fluttered dowm all this way before them, to see if they were on 
a foraging expedition, and if there were any plunder going, and 
now could not summon courage to cross the river, but stood 
crooning and cursing by the brink. Then they sauntered away 
through the forest, side by side, along the sandy track, among the 
knolls of bracken, with the sunlit boughs overhead whispering 
knowingly to one another in the evening breeze, as they passed 
beneath. — An evening walk long remembered by both of them. 

“ Oh see ye not that pleasant road, 

That winds along the ferny brae ? 

Oh that’s the road to fairy land, 

Where thou and I this e’en must gae.” 

“ And so you cannot remember England, Mr. Buckley ? ” says 
Alice. 

“ Oh dear, no. Stay though, I ain speaking too fast. I can 
remember some few places. I remember a steep, red road, that 
led up to the church, and have some dim recollection of a vast 
grey building, with a dark porch, which must have been the 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


249 


church itself. I can see, too, at this moment, a broad green flat, 
beside a creek, which was covered with yellow and purple flowers, 
which mother and I made into nosegays. That must he the place 
my father speaks of as the Hatherleigh Meadows, where he used 
to go fishing, and, although I must have been there often, yet 
I can only remember it on one occasion, when he emptied out 
a basket of fish on the grass for me to look at. My impression 
of England is, that everything was of a brighter colour than here ; 
and they tell me I am right.” 

“ A glorious country,” said Alice ; “ what would I give to see 
it ? — so ancient and venerable, and yet so amazingly young and 
vigorous. It seems like a waste of existence for a man to stay 
here tending sheep, when his birthright is that of an Englishman : 
the right to move among his peers, and find his fit place in the 
greatest empire in the world. Never had any woman such a 
noble destiny before her as this young lady who has just ascended 
the throne.” 

But the conversation changed here, and her Majesty escaped 
criticism for the time. They came to an open space in the forest, 
thickly grown with thickets of bracken fern, prickly acacia, and 
here and there a solitary dark-foliaged lightwood. In the centre 
rose a few blackened posts, the supports of what had once been 
a hut, and as you looked, you were surprised to see an English 
rose or two, flowering among the dull-coloured prickly shrubs, 
which were growing around. A place, as any casual traveller 
would have guessed, which had a history, and Sam, seeing Alice 
pause, asked her, “ what old hut was this ? ” 

“ This,” she said, “ is the Donovans’ old station, where they 
were burnt out by the blacks.” 

Sam knew the story well enough, but he would like to hear her 
tell it ; so he made believe to have heard some faint reports of the 
occurrence, and what could she do, but give him the particulars ? 

“They had not been here a year,” she said; “and Mrs. 
Donovan had been confined only three days ; there was not a soul 
on the station but herself, her son Murtagh, and Miss Burke. 
All day the blackfellows were prowling about, and getting more 
and more insolent, and at night, just as Murtagh shut the door, 
they raised their yell, and rushed against it. Murtagh Donovan 
and Miss Burke had guessed what was coming all day, but had 
kept it from the sick woman, and now, when the time came, they 
were cool and prepared. They had two double-barrelled guns 
loaded with slugs, and with these they did such fearful execution 
from two loop-holes they had made in the slabs, that the savages 
quickly retired ; but poor Miss Burke, incautiously looking out to 


250 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


get a shot, received a spear wound in her shoulder, which she 
bears the mark of to this day. But the worst was to come. The 
blackfellows mounted on the roof, tried to take off the hark, and 
throw their spears into the hut, but here they were foiled again. 
Wherever a sheet of hark was seen to move they watched, and on 
the first appearance of an enemy, a charge of shot at a few yards’ 
distance told with deadly effect. Mrs. Donovan, who lay in bed 
and saw the whole, told my father that Lesbia Burke loaded and 
fired with greater rapidity and precision than did her cousin. A 
noble woman, I say.” 

“ Good old Lesbia ! ” said Sam ; “ and how did it end ? ” 

<< Why, the foolish blacks fired the woolshed, and brought the 
Delisles upon them ; they tried to fire the roof of the hut, but it 
was raining too hard : otherwise it would have gone hard with 
poor Miss Burke. See, here is a peach-tree they planted, covered 
with fruit ; let us gather some ; it is pretty good, for the Donovans 
have kept it pruned in memory of their escape.” 

“ But the hut was not burnt,” said Sam, “ where did it stand ? ” 

“ That pile of earth there, is the remains of the old turf 
chimney. They moved across the river after it happened.” 

But peaches, when they grow on a high tree, must be climbed 
for, particularly if a young and pretty girl expresses a wish for 
them. And so it fell out, that Sam was soon astride of one of 
the lower boughs, throwing the frait do^vn to Alice, who put them 
one by one into the neatest conceivable little basket that hung on 
her arm. 

And so they were employed, busy and merry, when they heard 
a loud cheery voice, which made both of them start. 

“Quite a scene from ‘ Paradise Lost,’ I declare; only Eve 
ought to be up the tree handing dovm the apples to Adam, and 
not vice versa. I miss a carpet snake, too, who would represent 
the Deuce, and make the thing complete. — Sam Buckley, how are 
you?” 

It was Captain Brentwood who had come on them so inaudibly 
along the sandy track, on horseback, and beside him was son Jim, 
looking rather mischievously at Sam, who did not show to the 
best of advantage up in the peach-tree ; but, having descended, 
and greetings being exchanged, father and son rode on to dress 
for dinner, the hour for which was now approaching, leaving Sam 
and Alice to follow at leisure, which they did ; for Captain 
Brentwood and Jim had time to dress and meet in the verandah, 
before they saw the pair come sauntering up the garden. 

“Father,” said Jim, taking the Captain’s hand, “how would 
that do ? ” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


251 


“ Marvellous well, I should say ; ” replied the Captain. 

“ And so I think, too,” said Jim. “Hallo ! you two ; dinner 
is ready, so look sharp.” 

After dinner the Captain retired silently to the chimney-corner, 
and read his book, leaving the three young people to amuse them- 
selves as they would. Nothing the Captain liked so much as 
quiet, while he read some abstruse w’ork on Gunnery, or some 
scientific voyage ; but I am sorry to say he had got very little 
quiet of an evening since Alice came home, and Jim had got some 
one to chatter to. This evening, however, seemed to promise 
well, for Alice brought out a great hook of coloured prints, and 
the three sat down to turn them over, Jim, of course, you know, 
being in the middle. 

The hook was “Wild Sports of the East,” a great volume of 
coloured lithographs, worth some five-and-twenty guineas. One 
never sees such books as that iiow-a-days, somehow ; people, I 
fancy, would not pay that price for them. What modern travels 
have such plates as the old editions of “ Cook’s Voyages ” ? The 
number of illustrated books is increased tenfold, but they are 
hardly improved in quality. 

But Sam, I think, would have considered any book beautiful in 
such company. “ This,” said Alice, “ is what we call the ‘ Tiger 
Book ’ — why, you will see directly. — You turn over, Jim, and 
don’t crease the pages.” 

So Jim turned over, and kept them laughing by his simple 
remarks, more often affected than real, I suspect. Now they went 
through the tangled jungle, and seemed to hear the last mad howl 
of the dying tiger, as the elephant knelt and pinned him to the 
ground with his tusks. Now they chased a lordly buffalo from 
his damp lair in the swamp ; now they saw the English officers 
flying along on their Arabs through the high grass with well- 
poised spears after the snorting hog'. They have come un- 
expectedly on a terrible old tiger ; one of the horses swerves, and 
a handsome young man, losing his seat, seems just falling into 
the monster’s jaws, while the pariah dogs scud away terrified 
through the grass. 

“ That chap will be eaten immediately,” says Jim. 

“ He has been in that position ever since I can remember,” 
says Alice ; “ so I think he is pretty safe.” 

Now they are with the British army on the march. A scarlet 
bar stretches across the plain, of which the further end is lost in 
the white mirage — all in order ; walking irresistibly on to the 
conquest of an empire greater than Haroun A1 Kaschid’s. So 
naturally done too, that as you look, you think you see the columns 


252 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


swing as they advance, and hear the heavy, weary tramp of the 
troops above the din and shouting of the crowd of camp-followers, 
on camels and elephants, which surrounds them. Beyond the 
plain the faint blue hills pierce the grey air, barred with a few 
long white clouds, and far away a gleaming river winds through a 
golden country spanned with long bridges, and fringed with many 
a fantastic minaret. 

How I should like to see that ! ” said Alice. 

“ Would you like to be a countess,” said Jim, “ and ride on an 
elephant in a howitzer ? ” 

“ Howdah, you goose ! ” said Alice. “ Besides, that is not a 
countess ; that is one of the soldiers’ wives. Countesses don’t go 
to India : they stay at home to mind the Queen’s clothes.” 

“What a pleasant job for them,” said Jim, “when her Most 
Gracious Majesty has got the toothache ! I wonder whether she 
wears her crown under her bonnet or over it ? ” 

Captain Brentwood looked up. “My dear boy,” he said, “does 
it not strike you that you are talking nonsense ? ” 

“ Did you ever see the old King, father ? ” said Jim. 

“ I saw King George the Third many times.” 

“ Ah, but I mean to speak to him.” 

“ Once only, and then he was mad. He was sitting up with 
her Majesty, waiting for intelligence which I brought. His Royal 
Highness took the despatches from me, but the King insisted on 
seeing me.” . 

“ And what did he say, father ? Do tell us,” said Alice eagerly. 

“ Little enough, my love,” said the Captain, leaning back. 
“ He asked, ‘ Is this the officer who brought the despatches, 
York ? ’ And his Royal Highness said ‘ Yes.’ Then the King 
said, ‘ You bring good news, sir ; I was going to ask you some 
questions, but they are all gone out of my head. Go and get your 
supper; get your supper, sir.’ Poor old gentleman. He was a 
kindly old man, and I had a great respect for him. Alice, sing us 
a song, my love.” 

She sang them “ The Burial of Sir John Moore ” with such 
perfect taste and pathos that Sam felt as if the candle had gone 
out when she finished. Then she turned round and said to him, 
“ You ought to like that song ; your father was one of the actors 
in it.” 

“He has otten told me the story,” said Sam, “but I never 
knew what a beautiful one it was till I heard you sing it.” 

All pleasant evenings must end, and at last she rose to go to 
bed. But Sam, before he went off to the land of happy dreams, 
saw that the little white glove which he had noticed in the morn- 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


253 


ing was lying neglected on the floor ; so he quietly secured and 
kept it. And, last year, opening his family Bible to refer to 
certain entries, now pretty numerous, in the beginning, I found a 
little white glove pinned to the fly-leaf, which I believe to be the 
same glove here spoken of. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A GENTLEMAN FROM THE WARS. 

I NEED hardly say that Sam was sorry when the two days which 
he had allowed himself for his visit were over. But that evening, 
when he mentioned the fact that he was going away in the morn- 
ing, the Captain, Alice, and Jim, all pressed him so eagerly to 
stay another week, that he consented ; the more as there was no 
earthly reason he knew of why he should go home. 

And the second morning from that on which he should have 
been at home, going out to the stable before breakfast, he saw his 
father come riding over the plain, and, going to meet him, found 
that he, too, meditated a visit to the Captain. 

“ I thought you were come after me, father,” said Sam. “ By 
the bye, do you know that the Captain’s daughter. Miss Alice, is 
come home ? ” 

“Indeed! ” said the Major; “ and what sort of a body is she?” 

“ Oh, she is well enough. Something like Jim. Plays very 
well on the piano, and all that sort of thing, you know. Sings 
too.” 

“ Is she pretty? ” asked the Major. 

“Oh, well, I suppose she is,” said Sam. “ Yes ; I should say 
that a great many people would consider her pretty.” 

They had arrived at the door, and the groom had taken the 
Major’s horse, when Alice suddenly stepped out and confronted 
them. 

The Major had been prepared to see a pretty girl, but he was 
by no means prepared for such a radiant, lovely, blushing creature 
as stepped out of the darkness into the fresh morning to greet 
him, clothed in white; bareheaded, with 

“A single rose in her hair.” 

As he told his wife, a few days after, he was struck “ all of a 


254 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


heap ; ” and Sam heard him whisper to himself, “ By Jove ! ” 
before he went up to Alice and spoke. 

“ My dear young lady, you and I ought not to be strangers, for 
I recognise you from my recollections of your mother. Can you 
guess who I am ? ” 

‘‘I recognise you from my recollections of your son, sir,” said 
Alice, with a sly look at Sam ; “ I should say that you were Major 
Buckley.” 

The Major laughed, and, taking her hand, carried it to his lips ; 
a piece of old-fashioned courtesy she had never experienced before, 
and which won her heart amazingly. 

“Come, come, Buckley!” said the quiet voice of Captain 
Brentwood from die dark passage ; “what are you at there with 
my daughter ? I shall have to call out and fight some of you 
young fellows yet, I see.” 

Alice went in past her father, stopping to give him a kiss, and 
disappeared into the breakfast-room. The Captain came out, and 
shook hands warmly with the Major, and said, 

“ What do you think of her, — eh ? ” 

“ I never saw such beauty before,” answered the Major ; 
“ never, by Jove 1 I tell you what, Brentwood, I wish she could 
come out this season in London. Why, she might marry a duke.” 

“ Let us get her a rouge-pot and a French governess, and send 
her home by the next ship; eh, Buckley?” said the Captain, with 
his most sardonic smile. “ She would be the better for a little 
polishing ; wouldn’t she, eh ? Too hoydenish and forward, I am 
afraid ; too fond of speaking the truth. Let’s have her taught to 
amble, and mince, and — Bah, come to breakfast! ” 

The Major laughed heartily at this tirade of the Captain’s. He 
was fond of teasing him, and I believe the Captain liked to be 
teased by him. 

“ And what are you three going to do with yourselves to-day, 
eh? ” asked the Captain at breakfast. “It is a matter of total 
indifference to me, so long as you take yourselves off somewhere, 
and leave me in peace.” 

Alice was spokesman : — “ We are going up to the Limestone 
Gates ; Mr. Samuel Buckley has expressed a desire to see them, 
and so Jim and I thought of taking him there.” 

This was rather a jesuitical speech. The expedition to the 
Limestone Gates involved a long ride through very pretty scenery, 
which she herself had proposed. As for Sam, bless you ! he 
didn’t care whether they rode east, west, north, or south, so long 
as he rode beside her ; however, having got his cue, he expressed 
a strong wish to examine, geologically, the great band of limestone 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


255 


which alternated with the slate towards the mountains, the more 
particularly as he knew that the Captain and the Major intended 
to ride out in another direction, to examine some new netting for 
sheep -yards which the Captain had imported. 

If Major Buckley thought Alice beautiful as he had seen her in 
the morning, he did not think her less so when she was seated on 
a beautiful little horse, which she rode gracefully and courageously, 
in a blue riding-habit, and a sweet little grey hat with a plume of 
companion’s feathers hanging down on one side. The cockatoo 
was on the door-step to see her start, and talked so incessantly in 
his excitement, that even when the magpie, (who wanted, you 
know, to see the thing quietly and form his opinion, not to have 
everybody talking at once,) assaulted him and pulled a feather out 
of his tail, he could not be quiet. Sam’s horse Widderin capered 
with delight, and Sam’s dog Rover coursed far and wide before 
them, with joyful bark. So they three went off through the 
summer’s day as happy as though all life were one great summer’s' 
holiday, and there were no storms below the horizon to rise and 
overwhelm them ; through the grassy flat, where the quail whirred 
before them, and dropped again as if shot ; across the low rolling 
forest land, where a million parrots fled whistling to and fro, like 
jewels in the sun ; past the old stock-yard, past the sheep-wash 
hut, and then through forest which grew each moment more dense 
and lofty, along the faint and narrow track which led into one of 
the most abrupt and romantic gullies which pierce the Australian 
Alps. 

AH this became classic ground to them afterwards, and the 
causes which made it so were now gathering to their fulfilment, 
even now, while these three were making happy holiday together, 
little dreaming of what was to come. Afterwards, years after, 
they three came and looked on this valley again ; not as now, with 
laughter and jokes, but silently, speaking in wliispers, as though 
they feared to wake the dead. 

The road they followed, suddenly rising from the forest, took 
over the shoulder of a rocky hill, and then, plunging down again, 
followed a little running creek, up to where a great ridge of slate, 
crossing the valley, hemmed them in on either side, leaving only 
room for the creek and the road. Following it further, the glen 
opened out, sweeping away right and left in broad curves, while 
straight before them, a quarter of a mile distant, there rose out of 
the low scrub and fern a mighty wall of limestone, utterly barring 
all further progress save in a single spot to the left, where the 
vast grey wall was split, giving a glimpse of another glen beyond. 
This great natural cleft was the limestone gate which they had 


256 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


come to see, and which was rendered the more wonderful by a tall 
pinnacle of rock, which stood in the centre of the gap about 300 
feet in height, not unlike one of the same kind in Dovedale. 

“I don’t think I ever saw anything so beautiful,” said Alice. 
“ How fine that spire of rock is, shooting up from the feathered 
shrubs at the base ! I will come here some day and try to draw 
it.” 

“ Wait a minute,” said Jim ; “ j^ou have not seen half yet.” 

He led them through the narrow pass, among the great boulders 
which lined the creek. The instant they came beyond, a wind, 
icy cold, struck upon their cheeks, and Alice, dropping her reins, 
uttered a cry of awe and wonder, and Sam too exclaimed aloud ; 
for before them, partly seen through crowded tree -stems, and 
partly towering above the forest, lay a vast level wall of snow, 
flecked here and there by the purple shadow of some flying summer 
cloud. 

' A sight so vast and magnificent held them silent for a little ; 
then suddenly, Jim, looking at Alice, saw that she was shivering. 

“ What is the matter, Alice, my dear ? ” he said ; “let us come 
away : the snow- wind is too much for you.” 

“ Oh ! it is not that ! ” she said. “ Somebody is walking over 
my grave.” 

“ Oh, that’s all ! ” said Jim ; “ they are always at it with me, 
in cold weather. Let ’em. It won’t hurt, that I know of.” 

But they turned homeward, nevertheless ; and coming through 
the rock walls again, Jim said, 

“ Sam, what was that battle the Doctor and you were reading 
about one day, and you told me all about it aftenvards, you 
know ? ” 

“ Malplacquet ? ” 

“ No ; something like that, though. Where they got bailed up 
among the rocks, you know, and fought till they were all killed.” 

“ Thermopylae ? ” 

“ Ah ! This must be just such another place, I should think.” 

“ Thermopylae was by the sea-shore,” said Alice. 

“Now, I should imagine,” said Sam, pointing to the natural 
glacis formed by the decay of the great wall which they had seen 
fronting them as they came up, “ that a few determined men with 
rifles, posted among those fern-trees, could make a stand against 
almost any force.” 

“But, Sam,” said Jim, “ they might be cut up by cavalry. 
Horses could travel right up the face of the slope there. Now, 
suppose a gang of bushrangers in that fern- scrub ; do you think 
an equal number of police could not turn them out of it ? Wliy, 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


257 


I have seen the place where Moppy’s gang turned and fought 
Desborough on the Macquarrie. It was stronger than this, and 
yet — you know what he did with them, only kept one small one for 
hanging, as he elegantly expressed it.” 

“ But I ain’t talking of bushrangers,” said Sam. “ I mean such 
fellows as the Americans in the War of Independence. See what 
a dance they led our troops with their bushfighting.” 

“ I wonder if ever there will he a War of Independence here,” 
said Alice. 

‘‘ I know which side I should he on, if there was,” said Sam. 

“ Which would that he ? ” asked Jim. 

“ My dear friend,” said Sam, testily, “ how can you, an officer’s 
son, ask me, an officer’s son, such a question ? The King’s (I 
beg pardon, the Queen’s) side, of course.” 

“ And so would I,” said Jim, “if it came to that, you know.” 

“ You would never have the honour of speaking to your sweet 
sister again, if you were not,” said Alice. 

“ But I don’t think those Americans were in the wrong; do you, 
Miss Brentwood ? ” said Sam. 

“Why no; I don’t suppose that such a man as General 
Washington, for instance, would have had much to do with them 
if they had been.” 

“However,” said Sam, “we are talking of what will never 
occur here. To begin with, we could never stand alone against a 
great naval power. They would shut us up here to starve. We 
have everything to lose, and nothing to gain by a separation. I 
would hardly like, myself, for the sake of a few extra pounds taxes, 
to sell my birthright as an Englishman.” 

“Conceive,” said Alice, “being in some great European city, 
and being asked if you were British, having to say. No ! ” 

They were coming through the lower pass, and turned to look 
hack on the beautiful rock-walled amphitheatre, sleeping peaceful 
and still under the afternoon sun. The next time (so it happened) 
that Sam and Jim looked at that scene together, was under very 
different circumstances. Now the fronds of the fern-trees were 
scarce moved in the summer’s breeze, and all was silent as the 
grave. They saw it again ; — when every fern tuft blazed with 
musketry, and the ancient cliffs echoed with the shouts of fighting, 
and the screams of dying men and horses. 

“It is very early,” said Alice. “ Let us ride to the left, and 
see the great waterfall you speak of, Jim.” 

It was agreed. Instead of going home they turned through the 
forest, and debouched on the plains about two miles above Garoopna, 
and, holding their course to the river, came to it at a place where 

18 


258 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


a great trap dike, crossing, formed a waterfall, over which the river, 
now full with melting snow, fell in magnificent confusion. They 
stood watching the grand scene with delight for a short time, and 
then, crossing the river by a broad shallow ford, held their way 
homeward, along the eastern and more level hank, sometimes rein- 
ing up their horses to gaze into the tremendous glen below them, 
and watch the river crawling on through many impediments, and 
begimiing to show a golden light in its larger pools beneath the 
sloping, westering sun. 

Just as they sighted home, on the opposite side of the river, 
they perceived two horsemen before them, evidently on the track 
between Major Buckley’s and Garoopna. They pushed on to 
“ overhaul them,” and found that it was Doctor Mulhaus, whom 
they received with boisterous welcome, and a tail, handsome young 
gentleman, a stranger. 

“A young gentleman, Sam,” said the Doctor, “Mr. Halbert 
by name, who arrived during your father’s absence with letters of 
introduction. I begged him to follow your father over here, 
and as his own horse was knocked up, I mounted him at his own 
request on Jezebel, he preferring her to all the horses in the 
paddock on account of her beauty, after having been duly warned 
of her wickedness. But Mr. Halbert seems of the Centaur 
species, and rather to enjoy an extra chance of getting his neck 
broke.” 

Politeness to strangers was one of the first articles of faith in 
the Buckley and Brentwood families : so the young folks were soon 
on the best of tenns. 

“ Are you from Sydney way, Mr. Halbert ? ” said Sam. 

“ Indeed,” said the young man, “ I have only landed in the 
country six weeks. I have got three years’ leave of absence from 
my regiment in India, and, if I can see a chance, I shall cut the 
army and settle here.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Alice, “ are you a soldier, Mr. Halbert ? ” 

“ I have that honour. Miss Brentwood. I am a lieutenant in 
the Bengal Horse Artillery.” 

“ That is delightful. I am a soldier’s daughter, and Mr. 
Buckley here also, as you know, I suppose.” 

“ A soldier’s daughter, is he ? ” said impudent Jim. “ A very 
fine girl, too ! ” 

Sam, and Jim too, had some disrespectful ideas about soldiers’ 
riding qualities ; Sam could not help saying, — 

“ I hope you will be careful with that mare, Mr. Halbert ; I 
should not like a guest of ours to be damaged. She’s a desperate 
brute, — I am afraid of her myself.” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


259 


“ I think I know the length of her ladyship’s foot,” said Hal- 
bert, laughing good-naturedly. 

As they were speaking, they were passing through a narrow way 
in a wattle scrub. Suddenly a blundering kangaroo, with Rover 
in full chase, dashed right under the mare’s nose and set her 
plunging furiously. She tried to wheel round, but, finding herself 
checked, reared up three or four times, and at last seemed to stand 
on her hind legs, almost overbalancing herself. 

Halbert sat like a statue till he saw there was a real chance of 
her falling back on him ; then he slipped his right foot quickly out 
of the stirrup, and stood with his left toe in the iron, balancing 
himself till she was quieter ; then he once more threw his leg 
across the saddle, and regained his seat, laughing. 

Jim clapped his hands ; “By Jove, Sam, we must get some of 
these army men to teach us to ride, after all ! ” 

“ We must do so,” said Sam. “If that had been you or I, Jim, 
with our rough clumsy hands, we should have had the mare back 
atop of us.” 

“ Indeed,” said Alice, “ you are a splendid rider, Mr. Halbert ; 
but don’t suppose, from Mr. Buckley’s account of himself, that he 
can’t ride well ; I assure you we are all very proud of him. He 
can sit some bucking horses which very few men will attempt to 
mount.” . 

“ And that same bucking. Miss Brentwood,” said Halbert, “ is 
just what puzzles me utterly. I got on a bucking horse in Sydney 
the other day, and had an ignominious tumble in the sale-yard, to 
everybody’s great amusement.” 

“ We must give one another lessons, then, Mr. Halbert,” said 
Sam ; — “ but I can see already, that you have a much finer hand 
than I.” 

Soon alter they got home, where the rest of the party were 
w'atching for them, wondering at their late absence. Halbert was 
introduced to the Major by the Doctor, who said, “ I deliver over 
to you a guest, a young conqueror from the Himalayas, and son 
of an old brother warrior. If he now breaks his neck horse-riding, 
his death will not be at my door ; I can now eat my dinner in 
peace.” 

Alter dinner the three young ones, Sam, Alice, and Jim, 
gathered round the fire, leaving Halbert with the Major and the 
Captain talking military, and the Doctor looking over an abstruse 
mathematical calculation, with which Captain Brentwood was not 
altogether satisfied. Alice and Sam sat in chairs side by side, 
like Christians, but Jim lay on the floor, between the two, like a 
blackfellow ; they talked in a low voice about the stranger. 


260 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“I say,” said Jim, “ ain’t lie a handsome chap, and can’t he 
ride ? I dare say he’s a devil to fight, too, — hear him tell how 
they pounded away at those Indians in that battle. I expect 
they’d have made a general of him before now, only he’s too 
young. Dad says he’s a very distinguished young officer. Alice, 
my dear, you should see the wound he’s got, a great seam all dovm 
his side. I saw it when he was changing his shirt, in my room 
before dinner.” 

“ Poor fellow ! ” said Alice ; “I like him very much. Don’t 
you, Mr. Buckley ? ” 

“ I like him exceedingly; — I hope he’ll stop with us,” continued 
Jim. 

“ And I also,” said Sam, “ but what shall we do to-morrow ? ” 

“Let’s have a hunt,” said Jim. “Halbert, have you ever 
been kangaroo hunting ? ” 

“ Never ! — I want to go ! ” 

“ Well, we can have a capital hunt to-monw : Sam has got 
his dog Fly here, and I’ll take one of my best dogs, and we’ll 
have a good run, I dare say.” 

“ I shall come, too,” said Alice : “ that is,” added she, looking 
shyly at Sam, “ if you would be kind enough to take care of me, 
and let Mr. Halbert and Jim do the riding. But I’m afraid 
I shall be sadly in your way.” • ' 

“ If you don’t go,” said Sam, “ I shall stay at home : now then ! ” 

At this minute, the housekeeper came in bearing jugs and 
glasses. “ Eleanor,” said Jim, “ Is Jerry round ? ” 

“Yes, sir ; he’s coiled somewhere in the woodhouse,” said she. 

“ Just rouse him out and send him in.” 

“ Who is this Jeny who coils in woodhouses ? ” said Halbert. 

“ A tame black belonging to us. He is great at all sorts of 
hunting ; I want to see if he can find us a flying doe for to- 
morrow.” 

Jerry entered, and advanced with perfect self-possession towards 
the fire. He was a tall savage, with a big black beard, and 
wavy hair like a Comishman. He was dressed in an old pair of 
dandy riding breeches of Jim’s, which reached a short way below 
the knees, fitting closely, and a blue check shirt rolled up above 
the elbow showing his lean wiry forearm, seamed and scarred with 
spear wounds and bruises. He addressed nobody, but kept his 
eyes wandering all over the. room; at length he said, looking at 
the ceiling, — 

“ Cobbon thirsty this feUow ; you got a drop of brandy ? ” . 

“ Jerry,” said Jim, having produced the brandy, “ you make 
a light kangaroo.” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


261 


“ All about plenty kangaroo,” said Jerry. 

“ Yowi ;* but mine want it big one flying doe.” 

“ Ah-h-h ! ’ Mine make a light flying doe along a stockyard 
this morning ; close by, along a fent, you see ! ” 

“ That’ll do,” says Jim. “ We’ll be up round the old stock- 
yard after breakfast to-morrow'. You, Jerry, come with us.” 

It was a fresh breezy autumn morning in April, when the four 
sallied forth, about nine o’clock, for their hunt. The old stock- 
yard stood in the bush, a hundred yards from the comer of the 
big paddock fence, and among low rolling ranges and gullies, 
thickly timbered with gum, cherry, and sheoak : a thousand 
parrots flew swiftly in flocks, whistling and screaming from tree 
to tree, while wattled-birds and numerous other honey-eaters 
clustered on the flowering basksias. The spur- winged plover and 
the curlew ran swiftly among the grass, and on a tall dead tree 
white cockatoos and blue cranes watched the intruders curiously. 

Alice and Sam rode together soberly, and before them were 
Halbert and Jim, girt up, ready for the chase. Before them, 
again, was the active blackfellow, holding the dogs in a leash, — 
two tall hounds, bred of foxhound and greyhound, with a dash of 
collie. 

A mob of kangaroos crosses their path, but they are all small ; 
so the dogs, though struggling fiercely, are still held tight by 
Jerry ; now he crosses a little ridge before them and looks down 
into the gully beyond, holding up his hand. 

The two young men gather up their reins and settle themselves 
in their seats. ‘‘Now, Halbert,” says Jim, “sit fast and mind 
the trees.” 

They ride up to the blackfellow ; through the low wattles, they 
can see what is in the gully before them, though the dogs caimot. 

“Baal, flying doe this one,” says Jerry in a whisper. “ Old 
man this fellow, cobbon matong,t mine think it.” 

A great six-foot kangaroo was standing about two hundred 
yards from them, staring stupidly about him. 

“ Let go, Jerry,” said Jim. The dogs released, sprang for- 
ward, and, in an instant, saw their quarry, which, with a loud puff 
of alarm, bounded away up the opposite slope at full speed, 
taking twenty feet at each spring. 

Halbert and Jim dashed off after the dogs, who had got a good 
start of them, and were laying themselves out to their work -right 
gallantly ; Sam’s dog. Fly, slightly leading. Both dogs were close 
on the game, and Halbert said, — 

* Yowi means yes. But Mr. Hamlyn is a little incorrect in using it 
here. It is more of a Moreton Bay word.— H. K. f “ Very strong.” 


262 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ We are going to have a short run, I’m afraid.” 

“ Talk about that twenty minutes hence,” said Jim, settling to 
his work. 

Over range after range they hold their headlong course. Now 
a bandicoot scuttles away from under their feet to hide in his 
hollow log ; now a mob of terrified cattle huddle together as they 
sweep by ; now they are flying past a shepherd’s hut, and the 
mother runs out to snatch up a child, and bear him out of harm’s 
way, after they are safe past. A puppy, three weeks old, joins 
the chase with heart and soul, hut caves in ” at about fifty 
yards, and sits him down to bark. Now they are rushing on 
through a broad flat, with another great range before them. Still 
always the grey bounding figure holds on, through sunlight and 
shadow, with the dogs grim and steadfast close in his wake. 

The work begins to tell on the horses. Fat Jezebel, who could 
hardly be held at first, now is none the worse for a little spur ; 
and Jim’s lean, long-legged horse, seems to consider that the 
entertainment ought to conclude shortly. “Well done. Fly ! ” he 
shouts ; “ bravely tried, my girl ! ” She had drawn herself ahead, 
and made a bold strike at the kangaroo, hut missed him. Now 
the other dog. Bolt, tries it, but without luck ; and now they have 
both dropped a little back, and seem in for another mile or so. 

Well done, lass ! — there she goes again ! With a furious efibrt 
she pushes ahead, and seizes the flying beast by the hock — this 
time with some luck, for down he goes in a cloud of dust and 
broken sticks, and both the dogs are on him at once. Now he is 
up again and running, but feebly. And see, what is the matter 
with the young dog ? He runs on, hut keeps turning, snapping 
fiercely at his side, and his footsteps are marked with blood. 
Poor lad ! he has got a had wound in that last tumble, — the 
kangaroo has ripped up his flank with a kick from his hind foot. 
But now the chase is over, — the hunted beast has turned, and is 
at bay against a tree. Fly standing before him, waiting for 
assistance, snarling fiercely. 

They pulled up. Jim took out a pistol and presented it to 
Halbert. 

“ Thank you,” said he. “ Hair trigger? ” 

“ Yes.” 

He balanced it for a second, and in another the kangaroo was 
lying -quivering on the ground, shot through the heart. 

“ Well done ! ” said Jim. “ Now I must look to this dog.” 

All his flank along the ribs was laid open, and Jim, producing 
a needle and thread, proceeded to sew it up. 

“ Will you let me do that for you ? ” said Halbert. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


263 


I wish you would. I’m fond of the poor thing, and my hand 
shakes. You’ve seen the surgeons at work, I expect.” 

“ Yes, indeed.” And he tenderly and carefully stitched up the 
dog’s side, while Jim held him. 

“ What do we do with the game ? ” said he. 

“ Oh, Jerry will he along on our tracks presently,” said Jim. 
“ He brings me the tail, and does what he likes with the rest. 
I wonder where Sam and Alice are ? ” 

“ Oh, they are right enough,” said Halbert, laughing. “ I dare 
say they are not veiy anxious about the kangaroo, or anything 
else. That’s ‘ a case,’ I suppose ? ” 

“ Well, I hope it is,” said Jim ; “ hut you see I don’t know. 
Grirls are so odd.” 

“ Perhaps he has never asked her.” 

“No; I don’t think he has. I wish he would. You are not 
married, are you ? ” 

“ My God — no ! ” said Halbert, “ nor ever shall be.” 

“ Never ? ” 

“ Never, Jim. Let me tell you a story as we ride home. You 
and I shall be good friends, I know. I like you already, though 
we have only known one another two days. I can see well what 
you are made of. They say it eases a man’s mind to tell his 
grief. I wish it would mine. Well ; before I left England I had 
secretly engaged myself to marry a beautiful girl, very much like 
your sister, a governess in my hrother-in-law’s family. I went ofi' 
to join my regiment, and left her there with my sister and her 
husband. Lord Carstone, who treated her as if she was already 
one of the family — God bless them ! Two years ago my father 
died, and I came into twenty thousand pounds ; not much, hut 
enough to get married on in India, particularly as I was getting 
on in my profession. So I wrote to her to come out to me. She 
sailed in the Assam, for Calcutta, hut the ship never arrived. 
She was spoken off the Mauritius, but never seen after. The 
underwriters have paid up her insurance, and everyone knows now 
that the Assam went down in a typhoon, with all hands.” 

“ God bless you ! ” said Jim, “ I am very sorry for that.” 

“ Thank you. I have come here for change of scene more than 
anything, but I think I shaU go hack soon.” ' 

“ I shall come with you,” said Jim. “ I have determined to 
he a soldier, and I know the governor has interest enough to get 
me into some regiment in India.” (I don’t believe he had ever 
thought of it before that morning.) 

“ If you are determined, he might.. His services in India were 
too splendid to have been forgotten yet.” • 


264 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ I wonder,” said Jim, “ if he will let me go ? I’d like to see 
Alice married first.” 

They jogged on in silence for a little, and slowly, on account of 
the wounded dogs. Then Jim said, — 

“ Well, and how did you like your sport ? ” 

“ Very much indeed ; but I thought hush-riding was harder 
work. We have only had one or two leaps over fallen logs 
altogether.” 

“ There ain’t much leaping, that’s a fact. I suppose you have 
been fox-hunting ? ” 

“ My father was a master of hounds,” replied Halbert. “ On 
the first day of the season, when the hounds met at home, there 
would be two hundred horsemen on our terrace, fifty of them, at 
least, in pink. It was a regular holiday for all the country round. 
Such horses, too. My father’s horse, the Elk, was worth £300, 
and there were better horses than him to be seen in the field, 
I promise you.” 

“ And all after a poor little fox ! ” 

“You don’t know Charley, I can see,” said Halbert. “Poor 
little fox, indeed ! Why, it’s as fair a match between the best- 
tried pack of hounds in England, and an old dog-fox, as one 
would wish to see. And as hard work as it is to ride up to them, 
even without a stiff fence at every two hundred yards, to roll you 
over on your head, if your horse is blown or clumsy. Just con- 
sider how many are run, and how few are killed. I consider a fox 
to be the noblest quarry in the world. His speed, courage, and 
cunning are wonderful. I have seen a fox run fifteen miles as the 
crow flies, and only three of us in at the death. That’s what 
I call sport.” 

“ So do I, by Jove ! ” said Jim. “ You have some good sport 
in India, too ? ” 

“ Yes. Pig-sticking is pretty — very pretty, I may say, if you 
have two or three of the right sort with you. All the Griffins 
ought to hunt together, though. There was a young fellow, a 
King’s-officer, and a nobleman, too, came out with us the other 
day, and rode well forward, but as the pig turned, he contrived to 
spear my horse through the pastern. He was full of apologies, 
and I was outwardly highly polite and indifferent, but internally 
cursing him up hill and down dale. I went home and had the 
horse shot ; but when I got up next morning, there was a Syce 
leading up and down a magnificent Australian, a far finer beast 
than the one which I had lost, which my Lord had sent up to replace 
my unfortunate nag. I went domi to his quarters and refused to 
accept it ; but he' forced me in the end, and it gave me a good 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


265 


lesson about keeping my temper over an unavoidable accident, 
whicli I don’t mean to forget. Don’t you think it was prettily 
done ? ” 

“ Yes, I do,” said Jim ; “ but you see these noblemen are so 
rich that they can afford to do that sort of thing, where you or I 
couldn’t. But I expect they are very good fellows on the whole.” 

“ There are just as large a proportion of good noblemen as there 
are of any other class — more than that you have no right to expect. 
I’m a liberal, as my father was before me, and a pretty strong one 
too ; but I think that a man with sixty thousand acres, and a seat 
in the House of Lords, is entitled to a certain sort of respect. A 
Grand Seigneur is a very capital institution it he will only stay on 
his estates some part of the year.” 

“ Ay ! ” said Jim ; who was a shrewd fellow in his way. 

They know that here, well enough ; look at our Macarthurs and 
Wentworths, — but then they must be men, and not snobs, as the 
governor says. 

AVhen they, got home, they found Sam and Alice sitting in the 
verandah as comfortable as you please. 

“Well,” said Jim; “you are a nice lot! This is what you 
call kangaroo -hunting 1 ” . 

“Oh, you went too fast for us. Have you killed ? ” 

“ Yes ! out by the big swamp.” 

“ You have taken your time to get home then.” 

“ Poor Bolt is cut up, and we couldn’t go out of a walk. Now 
give us something to eat, will you, Alice ? ” 

“ Well, ring the beU and we will have lunch.” 

But just as Jim rang the bell, there was a loud voice outside, 
and the three young men went out to see who it was, and found 
two horsemen in front of the door. 

One, who was still sitting on his horse, was a dark-haired slight 
young man, Charles Hawker in fact, whom we know already, but 
the other, who had dismounted, and was leaning against his horse, 
was a highbred, delicate little fellow, to whom we have yet to be 
introduced. 

He was a slight lad, perhaps not more than eighteen, with one 
of the pleasantest, handsomest faces of his own that you could 
svish to see, and also a very intellectual look about him, which 
impressed you at once with the idea that if he lived he would have 
made some sort of figure in life. He was one of the greatest 
dandies, also, in those parts, and after the longest ride used to look 
as if he had been turned out of a bandbox. On the present 
occasion he had on two articles of dress which attracted Jim’s 
attention amazingly. The first was a new white hat, which was 


266 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OP 


a sufficiently remarkable thing in those parts at that time ; and 
the second, a pair of yellow leather riding-trousers. 

“ Why, Cecil Mayford ! ” said Sam, “ how do you do ? Charley, 
how are you ? Just in time for lunch. Come in.” 

Jim was walking round and round Cecil without speaking a word. 
At last the latter said, “ How do you do, James Brentwood ? ” 

“ How do your breeches do, Cecil ? ” answered Jim ; “ that is 
a much more important question. By the bye, let me introduce 
you to Mr. Halbert. Also, allow me to have the honour to infonn 
you that my sister Alice is come home from school.” 

“ I am aware of that, and am come over to pay my respects. 
Sam, leave me alone. If I were to disarrange my dress before I 
was presented to Miss Brentwood, I would put a period to my 
existence. Jim, my dear soul, come in and present me. Don’t 
all you fellows come mobbing in, you know.” 

So Jim took Cecil in, and the other young feUows lounged about 
the door in the sun. “ Where have you come from, Charley ? ” 
asked Sam. 

“ I have been staying at the Mayfords’ ; and this morning, 
hearing that you and your father were here, we thought we would 
come over and stay a bit.” 

“ By the bye,” said Sam, “EUen Mayford was to have come 
home from Sydney the same time as Alice Brentwood, or there- 
abouts. Pray, is she come ? ” 

“Oh, yes ! ” said Charles ; “ she is come this fortnight, or 
more.” 

“ What sort of a girl has she grown to be ? ” 

“Well, I call her an uncommonly pretty girl. A very nice 
girl indeed, I should say. Have you heard the news from the 
north ? ” 

“No!” 

“ Bushrangers ! Nine or ten devils, loose on the upper Mac- 
quarrie, caught the publican at Marryong alone in the bush : he 
had been an overlooker, or some such thing, in old times, so they 
stripped him, tied him up, gave him four dozen, and left him to 
the- tender mercies of the blowflies;"*in- consequence of which he 
was found dead next day, with the cords at his wrists cutting do^vn 
to the bone with the struggles he made in his agony.” 

“ Whew ! ” said Sam. “We are going to have some of the 
old-fashioned work over again. Let us hope Desborough will get 
hold of them before they come this way.” 

“ Some of our fellow-countrymen,” said Halbert, “ are, it seems 
to me, more detestably ferocious than savages, when they once get 
loose.” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


267 


Much of a muchness — ^no better, and perhaps no worse,” said 
Sam. “ All men who act entirely without any law in their actions 
arrive at much the same degree, whether white or black.” 

“ And will this Captain Deshorough, whom you speak of, have 
much chance of catching these fellows ? ” asked Halbert. 

“ They will most likely disperse on his approach if he takes any 
force against them,” said Sam. “ I heard him say, myself, that 
the best way w^as to tempt them to stay and show fight, by taking 
a small force against them, as our admirals used to do to the French, 
in the war. % the bye, how is Tom Trouhridge ? He is quite 
a stranger to me. I have only seen him twice since he was hack 
from Port Phillip.” 

“ He is oft' again now, after some rams, up to the north.” 

“ I hope he won’t fall in with the bushrangers. Anybody with 
him ? ” 

“William Lee,” answered Charles. 

“ A good escort. There is lunch going in, — come along.” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

SAM MEETS WITH A KIVAL, AND HOW HE TREATED HIM. 

That week one of those runs upon the Captain’s hospitality took 
place which are common enough in the bush, and, although causing 
a temporary inconvenience, as generally as much enjoyed by the 
entertainer as entertained. Everybody during this next week 
came to see them, and nobody went -hack again. So by the end 
of the week there were a dozen or fourteen 'guests assembled, all 
uninvited, and apparently bent on making a good long stay of it. 

Alice, who had expected to be rather put out, conducted every- 
thing with such tact and dignity that Mrs. Buckley remarked to 
Mrs. Mayford, when they were alone together, “that she had 
never seen such beauty and such charming domestic grace combined, 
and that he would be a lucky young fellow who got her for a 
wife.” 

“ Well, yes, I should he inclined to say so too,” answered Mrs. 
Mayford. “ Rather much of the boarding-school as yet, but that 
will wear ofi*, I dare say. I don’t think the young lady will go 
very long without an offer. Pray, have you remarked anything, 
my dear madam ? ” 

Yes, Mrs. Buckley had remarked something on her arrival the 


268 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


day before yesterday. She had remarked Sam and Alice come 
riding over the paddock, and Sam, by way of giving a riding- 
lesson, holding the little white hand in his, teaching it (the dog !) 
to hold the reins properly. And on seeing Alice she had said to 
herself, “ That will do.” But all this was not what Mrs. Mayford 
meant — in fact, these two good ladies were at cross-purposes. 

“ Well, I thought I did,” replied Mrs. Buckley, referring to 
Sam. “ But one must not be premature. They are both very 
young, and may not know their own minds.” 

“ They seem as if they did,” said Mrs. Mayford. “ Look 
there ! ” Outside the window they saw something which gave 
Mrs. Buckley a sort of pang, and made Mrs. Mayford laugh. 

There was no one in the garden visible but Cecil Mayford and 
Alice, and she was at that moment busily engaged in pinning a 
rose into his buttonhole. “ The audacious girl ! ” thought Mrs. 
Buckley; “I am afraid she will be a daughter of debate among 
us. I wish she had not come home.” While Mrs. Mayford 
continued, — ■ 

“ I am far from saying, mind you, my dear Mrs. Buckley, that 
I don’t consider Cecil might do far better for himself. The girl is 
pretty, very pretty, and will have money. But she is too decided, 
my dear. Fancy a girl of her age expressing opinions ! Wliy, if 

I had ventured to express opinions at her age, I 1 don’t Imow 

what my father would have said.” 

“ Depend very much on what sort of opinions they were ; 
wouldn’t it ? ” said Mrs. Buckley. 

“ No ; I mean any opinions. Girls ought to have no opinions 
at all. There, last night when the young men were talking all 
together, she must needs get red in the face and bridle up, and 
say, ‘ She thought an Englishman who wasn’t proud of Oliver 
Cromwell was unworthy of the name of an Englishman.’ Her very 
words, I assure you. Why, if my daughter Ellen had dared to 
express herself in that way about a murderous Papist, I’d have 
slapped her face.” 

“I don’t think Cromwell was a Papist; was he ? ” said Mrs. 
Buckley. 

“ A Dissenter, then, or something of that sort,” said Mrs. 
Mayford. “ But that don’t alter the matter. What I don’t like 
to see is a young girl thrusting her oar in in that way. However, I 
shall make no opposition, I can assure you. Cecil is old enough 
to choose for himself, and a mother’s place is to submit. Oh, no, 
I assure you, whatever my opinions may be, I shall offer no opposi' 
tion.” 

“ I shouldn’t think you would,” said Mrs. Buckley, as the other 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


269 


left the room : “ rather a piece of luck for your hoy to marry the 
handsomest and richest girl in the country. However, madam, if 
you think I am going to play a game of chess with you for that 
girl, or any other girl, why, you are mistaken.” 

And yet it was very provoking. Ever since she had begun to 
hear from various sources how handsome and clever Alice was, she 
had made up her mind that Sam should marry her, and now to be 
put out like this by people whom they had actually introduced into 
the house ! It would he a great blow to Sam too. She wished he 
had never seen her. She would sooner have lost a limb than 
caused his honest heart one single pang. But, after aU, it might 
he only a little flirtation between her and Cecil. Girls would flirt ; 
hut then there would he Mrs. Mayford manoeuvring and scheming 
her heart out, while she, Agnes Buckley, was constrained by her 
principles only to look on and let things take their natural course. 

Now, there arose a coolness between Agnes Buckley and the 
Mayfords, mother and son, which was never made up — never, oh, 
never ! Not veiy many months after this she would have given 
ten thousand pounds to have been reconciled to the kind-hearted 
old busy-body ; but then it was too late. 

But now, going out into the garden, she found the Doctor busy 
planting some weeds he had found in the hush, in a quiet comer, 
with an air of stealth, intending to privately ask the gardener to 
see after them till he could fetch them away. The magpie, having 
seen from the window a process of digging and burying going on, 
had attended in his official capacity, standing behind the Doctor, 
and encouraging him every now and then with a dance, or a few 
flute-like notes of music. I need hardly mention that the moment 
the Doctor’s back was turned the bird rooted up every one of the 
plants, and buried them in some secret spot of his o\m, where they 
lie, I believe, till this day. 

To the Doctor she told the whole matter, omitting nothing, and 
then asked his advice. “I suppose,” she said, “you will only 
echo my own detemiination of doing nothing at all? ” 

“ Quite so, my dear madam. If she loves Sam, she will marry 
him ; if she don’t, he is better without her.” 

“That is true,” said Mrs. Buckley. “I hope she will have 
good taste enough to choose my hoy.” 

“ I hope so too, I am sure,” said the Doctor. “ But we must 
not be very furious if she don’t. Little Cecil Mayford is both 
handsomer and cleverer than Sam. We must not forget that, you 
know.” 

That evening was the first thoroughly unhappy evening, I think, 
that Sam ever passed in his life. I am inclined to imagine thal 


270 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


his digestion was out of order. If any of my readers ever find 
themselves in the same state of mind that he was in that night, let 
them be comforted by considering that there is always a remedy at 
hand, before which evil thoughts and evil tempers of all kinds fiy 
like mist before the morning sun. How many serious family 
quarrels, marriages out of spite, alterations of wills, and secessions 
to the Church of Rome, might have been prevented by a gentle 
dose of blue pill ! What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia are 
presented to our view by the immortal bard in the characters of 
Hamlet and Othello ! I look with awe on the digestion of such a 
man as the present King of Naples. Banish dyspepsia and 
spirituous liquors from society, and you would have no crime, or 
at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning. 

However, to return to Sam. He, Halbert, Charles Hawker, and 
Jim had been away riding down an emu, and had stayed out all 
day. But Cecil Mayford, having made excuse to stay at home, 
had been making himself in many ways agreeable to Alice, and at 
last had attended her on a ride, and on his return had been re- 
warded with a rose, as we saw. The first thing Sam caught sight 
of when he came home was Alice and Cecil walking up and down 
the garden very comfortably together, talking and laughing. He 
did not like to see this. He dreaded Cecil’s powers of entertain- 
ment too much, and it made him angry to hear how he was making 
Alice laugh. Then, when the four came into the house, this 
offending couple took no notice of them at all, but continued 
walking up and down in the garden, till Jim, who, not being in 
love, didn’t care twopence whether his sister came in or not, went 
out to the verandah, and called out “Hi ! ” 

“ What now ? ” said Alice, turning round. 

“ Why, we’re come home,” said Jim, “ and I want you.” 

“ Then you won’t get me, impudence,” said Alice, and began 
walking up and down again. But not long after, having to come 
in, she just said, “ How do, Mr. Halbert ? ” and passed on, never 
speaking to Sam. Now there was no reason why she should have 
spoken to him, but “ Good evening, Mr. Buckley,” would not have 
hurt anybody. And now in came Cecil, with that unlucky rose, 
and Jim immediately began, — 

“ Hallo, Cis, where did you get your flower? ” 

“ Ah, that’s a secret,” said Cecil, with an affected look. 

“No secret at all,” said Alice, coming back. “I gave it to 
him. He had the civility to stay and take me out for a ride, in- 
stead of going to run down those poor pretty emus. And that is 
his reward. I pinned it into his coat for him.” And out she 
went again. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


271 


Sam was very sulky, but he couldn’t exactly say with whom. 
With himself more than anybody, I believe. 

“ Like Cecil’s consummate impudence ! ” was his first thought; 
but after he had gone to his room to dress, his better nature 
came to him, and before dinner came on he was his old self 
again, unhappy still, but not sulky, and determined to be just. 

“ What right have I to be angry, even suppose she does come to 
care more for him than for me ? What can be more likely ? he 
is more courtly, amusing, better-looking, they say, and certainly 
cleverer ; oh, decidedly cleverer. He might as well make me his 
enemy as I make him mine. No ; dash it all ! He has been like 

a brother to me ever since he was so high, and I’ll be d d if 

there shan’t be fair play between us two, though I should go into 
the army through it. But I’ll watch, and see how things go.” 

So he watched at dinner and afterwards, but saw little to comfort 
him. Saw one thing, nay, two things, most clearly. One was, 
that Cecil Mayford was madly in love with Alice ; and the other 
was, that poor Cecil was madly jealous of Sam. He treated him 
differently to what he had ever done before, as, though on that 
evening he had first found his rival. Nay, he became almost rude, 
so that once Jim looked suddenly up, casting his shrewd blue eyes 
first on one and then on the other, as though to ask what the 
matter was. But Sam only said to himself, “Let him go on. 
Let him say what he will. He is beside himself now, and some 
day he will be sorry. He shall have fair play, come what will.” 

But it was hard for our lad to keep his temper sometimes. It 
was hard to see another man sitting alongside of her all the 
evening, paying her all those nameless little attentions which 
somehow, however unreasonably, he had brought himself to think 
were his right, and no one else’s, to pay. Hard to wonder, and 
wonder whether or no he had angered her, and if so, how ? 
Halbert, good heart, saw it all, and sitting all the evening by 
Sam, made himself so agreeable, that for a time even Alice herself 
was forgotten. But then, when he looked up, and saw Cecil still 
beside her, and her laughing and talking so pleasantly, while he 
was miserable and unhappy, the old chiU came on his heart again, 
and he thought — was the last happy week only a deceitful gleam 
of sunshine, and should he ever take his old place beside her 
again ? 

Once or twice more during the evening Cecil was almost insolent 
to him, but still his resolution was strong. 

“ If he is a fool, why should I be a fool ? I will wait and see if 
be can win her. If lie does, why there is India for me. It he 
does not, I will try again. Only I will not quarrel with Cecil, be- 


272 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


cause he is blinded. Little Cecil, who used to bathe with me and 
ride pickaback round the garden ! No ; he shall have fair play. 
By Jove, he shall have fair play, if I die for it.” 

And he had some little comfort in the evening. When they had 
all risen to go to bed, and were standing about in confusion light- 
ing candles, he suddenly found Alice by his side, who said in a 
sweet, low, musical tone, — 

“ Can you forgive me ? ” 

“ What have I to forgive, my dear young lady ? ” he said softly. 

“ I was thinking of asking your forgiveness for some unknown 
fault.” 

“ I have behaved so ill to you to-day,” she said, “ the first of 
my new friends ! I was angry at your going out after our poor 
emus, and I was cross to you when you came home. Do let us be 
friends again.” 

There was a chance for a reconciliation ! But here was Cecil 
May ford thrusting between them with a lit candle just at the wrong 
moment ; and she gave him such a sweet smile, and such kind 
thanks, that Sam felt nearly as miserable as ever. 

And next morning everything went wrong again. Whether it 
was merely coquetry, or whether she was angry at their hunting 
the emus, or whether she for a time preferred Cecil’s company, I 
know not ; hut she, during the next week, neglected Sam altogether, 
and refused to sit beside him, making a most tiresome show of 
being unable to get on without Cecil Mayford, who squired her 
here, there, and everywhere, in the most provoking fashion. 

But it so happened that the Doctor and the Major sat up later 
than the others that night, taking a glass of punch together before 
the fire, and the Major said, abruptly, — 

“ There will be mischief among the young fellows about that ' 
girl. It is a long while since I saw one man look at another as 
young Mayford did at our Sam to-night. I wish she were out of 
the way. Sam and Mayford are both desperately in love with her, 
and one must go to the wall. I wish that boy of mine was keener ; 
he stayed aloof from her all to-night.” 

“ Don’t you see his intention ? ” said the Doctor. “I am very 
much mistaken if I do not. He is deteimined to leave the field 
clear for all comers, unless she herself makes some sort of advances 
to him. ‘If she prefers Mayford,’ says Sam to himself, ‘ in the 
way she appears to, why, she is welcome to him, and I can go 
home as soon as I am assured of it.’ And go home he would, too, 
and never say one word of complaint to any living soul.” 

“What a clear, brave, honest soul that lad has! ” said the 
Major. 


GEOFFRY HA:\ILYN. 


273 


‘ ‘ Truly, said the Doctor , “ I only know one man who is his equal. ’ ’ 
And who is he ? ” 

“ His father. Good-night : good dreams ! ” 

* ^ * 

So Sam kept to his resolution of finding out whether or no Alice 

was likely to prefer Cecil to him. And, for all his watching and 
puzzling, he couldn’t. He had never confided one w'ord of all this 
to his mother, and yet she knew it all as well as he. 

Meanwhile, Cecil was quite changed. He almost hated Sam, 
and seldom spoke to him, and at the same time hated himself for 
it. He grew pale, too, and never could be persuaded to join any 
sport whatever ; while Sam, being content to receive only a few 
words in the day from My Lady, worked harder than ever, both in 
the yards and riding. All day he and Jim would he working like 
horses, with Halbert for their constant companion, and, half an 
hour before dinner, would run whooping down to the river for their 
bathe, and then come in clean, happy, hungry — so full of life and 
youth, that in these sad days of deficient grinders, indigestion, and 
liver, I can hardly realise tliat once I myself was as full of blood 
and as active and hearty as any of them. 

There was much to do the week that Alice and Sam had their 
little tifi*. The Captain was getting in the “ scrubbers,” cattle 
which had been left, under the not very careful rule of the 
Donovans, to run wild in the mountains. These beasts had now 
to he got in, and put through such processes as cattle are born to 
undergo. The Captain and the Major were both fully stifi* for 
working in the yards, but their places were well sui3plied by Sam 
and Jim. The two fathers, with the assistance of the stockman, 
and sometimes of the sons, used to get them into the yards, and 
then the two young men would go to work in a style I have never 
seen surpassed by any two of the same age. Halbert would some- 
times go into the yard and assist, or rather hinder ; hut he had 
to give up just when he was beginning to he of some use, as the 
exertion was too violent for an old wound he had. 

Meanwhile Cecil despised all these things, and, though a capital 
hand among cattle, was now groA\Ti completely effeminate, hanging 
about the house all day, making, in fact, ‘ ‘ rather a fool of himself 
about that girl,” as Halbert thought, and thought, besides, “What 
a confounded fool she will make of herself if she takes that little 
dandy ! — not that he isn’t a very gentlemanlike little fellow, but 
that Sam is worth five hundred of him.” 

One day, it so happened that every one was out hut Cecil and 
Alice ; and Alice, w'ho had been listening to the noises at the 
stockyard a long while, suddenly proposed to go there. 

19 


274 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


‘‘ I have never been,” she said ; “I should so like to go ! I 
know I am not allowed, hut you need not betray me, and I am 
sure the others won’t. I should so like to see what they are 
about ! ’ ’ 

“ I assure you Miss Brentwood, that it is not a fit place for a 
lady.” 

“ Why not ? ” 

Cecil blushed scarlet. If women only knew what awkward 
questions they ask sometimes ! In this instance he made an ass 
of himself, for he hesitated and stammered. 

“ Come along ! ” said she ; “ you are going to say that it is 
dangerous — (nothing was further from his thoughts) ; I must learn 
to face a little danger, you know. Come along.” 

‘‘I am afraid,” said Cecil, “that Jim will be very angry with 
me ; ” which was undoubtedly very likely. 

“ Never mind Jim,” she said ; “ come along.” 

So they went, and in the rush and confusion of the beasts’ feet 
got to the yard unnoticed. Sam and Jim were inside, and Hal- 
bert was perched upon the rails ; she came close behind him and 
peeped through. 

She was frightened. Close before her was Sam, hatless, in shirt 
and breeches only, almost unrecognisable, grimed with sweat, dust, 
and filth beyond description. He had been nearly homed that 
morning, and his shirt was torn from his armpit downwards, 
showing rather more of a lean muscular flank than would have 
been desirable in a drawing-room. He stood there with his legs 
wide apart, and a stick about eight feet long and as thick as one’s 
wrist in his hand ; while before him, crowded into a corner of the 
yard, were a mob of infuriated, terrified cattle. As she watched, 
one tried to push past him and get out of the yard ; he stepped 
aside and let it go. The next instant a lordly young bull tried the 
same game, but he was “wanted; ” so, just as he came nearly 
abreast of Sam, he received a frightful blow on the nose from the 
stick, which turned him. 

But only for a moment. The maddened beast shaking his head 
with a roar rushed upon Sam like a thunderbolt, driving him 
towards the side of the yard. He stepped on one side rapidly, 
and then tumbled himself bodily through the rails, and fell with 
his fine brown curls in the dust, right at the feet of poor Alice, 
who would have screamed, but could not find the voice. 

Jim and Halbert roared with laughter, and Sam, picking himself 
up, was beginning to join as loud as anybody, when he saw Ahce, 
looking very white and pale, and went towards her. 

“ I hope you haven’t been frightened by that evil-disposed bull. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


275 


Miss Brentwood,” he said pleasantly ; “you must get used to that 
sort of work.” 

“ Hallo, sister ! ” shouted Jim; “what the deuce brings you 
here ? I thought you were at home at your worsted work. You 
should have seen what we were at, Cecil, before you brought her 
up. Now, miss, just mount that rail alongside of Halbert, and 
keep quiet.” 

. “Oh, do let me go home, Jim dear ; I am so frightened ! ” 

“ Then you must learn not to he frightened,” he said. “ Jump 
up now ! ” 

But meanwhile the bull had the best of it, and had got out of 
the yard. A long lithe lad, stationed outside on horseback, was 
in full chase, and Jim, leaping on one of the horses tied to the 
rails, started off to his assistance. The two chased the unhappy 
bull as a pair of greyhounds chase a hare, with their whips 
cracking as rapidly and as loudly as you would fire a revolver. 
After an excursion of about a mile into the forest, the beast was 
turned and brought towards the yard. Twice he turned and 
charged the lad, with the same success. The cunning old stock- 
horse wheeled round or sprang aside, and the bull went blundering 
into empty space with two fourteen-foot stockwhips playing on his 
unlucky hide like rain. At length he was brought in again, and 
one by one those entitled to freedom were passed out by Sam, 
and others reserved unto a day of wrath — all but one cow with 
her calf. 

All this time Alice had sat by Halbert. Cecil had given no 
assistance, for Jim would have done anything rather than press a 
guest into the service. Halbert asked her what she thought of 
the sport. 

“ Oh, it is horrible,” she said. “ I should like to go home. I 
hope it is all over.” 

“Nearly,” said Halbert; “that cow and calf have got to 
go out. Don’t get frightened now ; watch your brother and 
Buckley.” 

It was a sight worth watching ; Sam and Jim advanced towards 
the maddened beasts to try and get the cow to bolt. The cattle 
were huddled up at the other end of the yard, and having been so 
long in hand, were getting dangerous. Once or twice young 
beasts had tried to pass, but had been driven back by the young 
men, with a courage and dexterity which the boldest matador in 
Spain could not have surpassed. * Cecil Mayfprd saw, with his 
well-accustomed eye, that matters were getting perilous, and placed 
himself at the rails, holding- one ready to slip if the beasts should 
break. lu a mojnent how, or why none could tell, they made a 


276 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


sudden rush : Jim was borne back, dealing blows about him like a 
Paladin, and Sam was down, rolled over and over in the dust, just 
at Alice’s feet. 

Half-a-dozen passed right over him as he lay. Jim had made 
good his retreat from the yard, and Cecil had quietly done just 
the right thing : put up the rail he held, and saved the day’s 
work. The cattle were still safe, but Sam lay there in the dust, 
motionless. 

Before any of them had appreciated what had happened, Alice 
was do^vn, and, seizing Sam by the shoulders, had dragged him to 
the fence. Halbert, horrified to see her actually in the presence 
of the cattle, leaped after her, put Sam through the rails, and lifted 
her up to her old post on the top. In another instant the beasts 
swept furiously round the yard, just over the place where they had 
been standing. 

They gathered round Sam, and for an instant thought he was 
dead ; but just as Jim hurriedly knelt down, and raising his head 
began to untie his handkerchief, Sam uprose, and, shaking himself 
and dusting his clothes, said, — 

“If it had been any other beast which knocked me do'wui but 
that poley heifer, I should have been hurt; ” and then said that 
“ it was bathing -time, and they must look sharp to be in time for 
dinner : ” three undeniable facts, showing that, although he was a 
little unsteady on his legs, his intellect had in nowise sufiered. 

And Halbert, glancing at Alice, saw something in her face that 
made him laugh ; and dressing for dinner in Jim’s room, he said 
to that young gentleman, — 

“ Unless there are family reasons against it, Jim, which of 
course I can’t speak about, you know, I should say you would 
have Sam for your brother-in-law in a very short time.” 

“ Do you really think so, now ? ” said Jim ; “I rather fancied 
she had taken up with Cecil. I like Sam’s fist, mind you, better 
than Cecil’s whole body, though he is a good little fellow, too.” 

“ She has been doing that, I think, rather to put Sam on his 
mettle ; for I think he was taking things too easy with her at first ; 
but now, if Cecil has any false hopes, lie may give them up ; the 
sooner the better. No woman who was fancy free could stand 
seeing that noble head of Sam’s come rolling down in the dust at 
her feet ; and what courage and skill he exhibited, too ! Talk of 
bull-fights ! I have seen one. Bah ! it is like this nail-brush to 
a gold watch, to what I saw to-day. Sam, sir, has won a wife by 
cattle-drafting.” 

“ If that is the case,” said Jim, pensively brushing his hair, “ I 
am very glad that Cecil’s care fov his fine clothes prevented his 


GEOFFRY IIAMLYN. 


277 


coming into the yard ; for he is one of the bravest, coolest hands 
among cattle, I know ; he beats me.” 

“ Then he beats a precious good fellow, Jim. A man who could 
make such play as you did to-day, with a stick, ought to have 
nothing but a big three-foot of blue steel in his hand, and her 
Majesty’s commission to use it against her enemies.” 

“ That will come,” said Jim, “ the day after Sam has got the 
right to look after Alice ; not before ; the governor is too fond of 
his logarithms.” 

When Sam came to dress for dinner he found that he was 
bruised all over, and had to go to the Captain for “ shin plaster,” 
as he called it. 

Captain Brentwood had lately been trying homoeopathy, which 
in his case, there being nothing the matter with him, was a decided 
success. He doctored Sam with Arnica externally, and gave him 
the five-hundredth of a grain of something to swallow ; but what 
made Sam forget his bruises quicker than these dangerous and 
violent remedies, was the delightful change in Alice’s behaviour. 
She was so agreeable that evening, that he was in the seventh 
heaven ; the only drawback to his happiness being poor Cecil May- 
ford’s utter distraction and misery. Next morning, too, after a 
swim in the river, he handled such a singularly good knife and 
fork, that Halbert told Jim privately, that if he, Sam, continued 
to sport such a confoundedly good appetite, he would have to be 
earned half-a-mile on a heifer’s horns, and left for dead, to keep 
up the romantic effect of his tumble the day before. 

They were sitting at breakfast, when the door opened, and there 
appeared before the assembled company the lithe lad I spoke of 
yesterday, who said, — 

“ Beg your pardon, sir ; child lost, sir.” 

They all started up. “ Whose child ? ” asked the Captain. 

“James Grewer’s child, sir, at the wattle hut.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Alice, turning to Sam, “ it is that pretty little boy 
up the river that we were admiring so last week.” 

“ When was he lost ? ” asked Major Buckley. 

“ Two days now, sir,” said the lad. 

“But the hut is on the plain side of tlie river,” said the Major; 
“ he can’t be lost on the plains.” 

“ The river is very low, sir,” said the lad ; “ hardly ancle-deep 
just there. He may have crossed.” 

“ The black fellows may have found him,” suggested Mrs. 
Buckley. 

“ They would have been here before now to tell us, if they had, 
I am afraid,” said Captain Brentwood. “Let us hope they may 


278 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


have got him ; however, we had better start at once. Two of us 
' may search the river between this and the hut, and two may follow 
it towards the Mayfords’. Sam, you have the best horse; go down 
to the hut, and see if you can find any trace across the river, on 
this side, and follow it up to the ranges. Take some one with 
you, and, by-the-bye, take your dog Kover.” 

They were all quickly on the alert. Sam was going to ask Jim 
to come with him ; but as he was putting the saddle on Widderin 
he felt a hand on his arm, and, turning, saw Cecil Mayford. 

“ Sam Buckley,” said Cecil, “let me ride with you; will you?” 

“ Who sooner, old friend ? ” answered Sam heartily : “ let us 
come together by all means, and if we are to go to the ranges, we 
had better take a blanket a-piece, and a wedge of damper. So if 
you will get them from the house, I will saddle your horse.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

HOW THE CHILD WAS LOST, AND HOW HE GOT FOUND AGAIN WHAT 

CECIL SAID TO SAM WHEN THEY FOUND HIM AND HOW IN CASTING 

LOTS, ALTHOUGH CECIL W'ON THE LOT, HE LOST THE PRIZE. 

Four or five miles up the river from Garoopna stood a solitary hut, 
snug — sheltered by a lofty bare knoll, round which the great river 
chafed among the boulders. Across the stream was the forest 
sloping down in pleasant glades from the mountain ; and behind 
the hut rose the plain four or five hundred feet over head, seem- 
ing to be held aloft by the blue-stone columns which rose from 
the river side. 

In this cottage resided a shepherd, his wife, and one little boy, 
their son, about eight years old. A strange, wild little bush child, 
able to speak articulately, but utterly without knowledge or experi- 
ence of human creatures, save of his father and mother ; unable to 
read a line ; without religion of any sort or kind ; as entire a little 
savage, in fact, as you could find in the worst den in your city, 
morally speaking, and yet beautiful to look on ; as active as a roe, 
and, with regard to natural objects, as fearless as a lion. 

As yet unfit to begin labour. All the long summer he would 
wander about the river bank, up and down the beautiful rock- 
walled paradise where he was confined, sometimes looking eagerly 
across the water at the waving forest boughs, and fancying he 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


279 


could see other children far up the vistas beckoning to him to 
cross and play in that merry land of shifting lights and shadows. 

It grew quite into a passion with the poor little man to get 
across and play there ; and one day when his mother was shifting 
the hurdles, and he was handing her the strips of green hide which 
bound them together, he said to her, — 

“ Mother, what country is that across the river ? ” 

“ The forest, child.” 

“ There’s plenty of quantongs over there, eh, mother, and rasp- 
berries ? Why mayn’t I get across and play there ? ” 

“ The river is too deep, child, and the Bunyip lives in the 
water under the stones.” 

“ Who are the children that play across there ? ” 

“Black children, likely.” 

“ No white children ? ” 

“Pixies ; don’t go near ’em, child; they’ll lure you on. Lord 
knows where. Don’t get trying to cross the river, now, or you’ll 
be drovmed.” 

But next day the passion was stronger on him than ever. Quite 
early on the glorious cloudless midsummer day he W'as down by 
the river side, sitting on a rock, with his shoes and stockings off, 
paddling his feet in the clear tepid water, and watching the million 
fish in the shallows — black fish and grayling — leaping and flashing 
in the sun. 

There is no pleasure that I have ever experienced like a child’s 
midsummer holiday. The time, I mean, when two or three of us 
used to go away up the brook, and take our dinners with us, and 
come home at night tired, dirty, happy, scratched beyond recog- 
nition, with a great nosegay, three little trout, and one shoe, the 
other one having been used for a boat till it had gone down with 
all hands out of soundings. How poor our Derby days, our 
Greenwich dinners, our evening parties, where there are plenty of 
nice girls, are after that I Depend on it, a man never experiences 
such pleasure or grief after fourteen as he does before : unless in 
some cases in his first love-making, when the sensation is new to 
him. 

But, meanwhile, there sat our child, barelegged, watching the 
forbidden ground beyond the river. A fresh breeze was moving 
the trees, and making the whole a dazzling mass of shifting light 
and shadow. He sat so still that a glorious violet and red king- 
fisher perched quite close, and, dashing into the Avater, came forth 
Avith a fish, and fled like a ray of light along the AAunding of the 
river. A colony of little shell parrots, too, crowded on a bough, 
and tAvittered and ran to and fro quite busily, as though they said 


280 


TBE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


to him, “We don’t mind you, my dear; you are quite one of 
us.” 

Never was the river so low. He stepped in ; it scarcely reached 
his ancle. Now surely he might get across. He stripped him- 
self, and, carrying his clothes, waded through, the water never 
reaching his middle all across the long, yellow, gravelly shallow. 
And there he stood naked and free in the forbidden ground. 

He quickly dressed himself, and began examining his new king- 
dom, rich beyond his utmost hopes. Such quantongs, such rasp- 
berries, surpassing imagination ; and when tired of them, . such 
fern boughs, six or eight feet long ! He would penetrate this 
region, and see how far it extended. 

What tales he would have for his father to-night. He would 
bring him here, and show him all the wonders, and perhaps he 
would build a new hut over here, and come and live in it ? 
Perhaps the pretty young lady, with the feathers in her hat, lived 
somewhere here, too ? 

There ! There is one of those children he has seen before 
across the river. Ah ! ah ! it is not a child at all, but a pretty 
grey beast, with big ears. A kangaroo, my lad ; he won’t play 
with you, but skips away slowly, and leaves you alone. 

There is something like the gleam of water on that rock. A 
snake ! Now a sounding rush through the wood, and a passing 
shadow. An eagle ! He brushes so close to the child, that he 
strikes at the bird with a stick, and then watches him as he shoots 
up like a rocket, and, measuring the fields of air in ever-widen- 
ing circles, hangs like a motionless speck upon the sky ; though, 
measure his wings across, and you will find he is nearer fifteen 
feet than fourteen. 

Here is a prize, though ! A wee little native bear, barely 
eight inches long, — a little grey beast, comical beyond expression, 
with broad flapped ears, sits on a tree within reach. He makes 
no resistance, but cuddles into the child’s bosom, and eats a leaf 
as they go along ; while his mother sits aloft, and grants in- 
dignant at the abstraction of her offspring, but, on the whole, 
takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on with her dimier of pepper- 
mint leaves. 

What a short day it has been ! Here is the sun getting low, 
and the magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before 
roosting. 

He would turn and go back to the river. Alas ! which way ? 

He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he 
thought, the way he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, pre- 
cipitous cliff, which, by some infernal magic, seemed to liave got 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


281 


between him and the river. Then he broke clo'wn, and that 
strange -madness came on him which comes even on strong men 
when lost in the forest : a despair, a confusion of intellect, which 
has cost many a man his life. Think what it must be with a 
child ! 

He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and 
home, and that he must climb it. Alas ! every step he took aloft 
carried him further from the river and the hope of safety ; and 
when he came to the top, just at dark, he saw nothing but cliff 
after cliff, range after range, all around him. He had been 
wandering through steep gullies all day unconsciously, and had 
penetrated far into the mountains. Night was coming down, still 
and crystal-clear, and the poor little lad was far away from help 
or hope, going his last long journey alone. 

Partly perhaps walking, and partly sitting down and weeping, he 
got through the night ; and when the solemn morning came up 
again he was still tottering along the leading range, bewildered ; 
crying, from time to time, “Mother, mother! ” still nursing his 
little bear, his only companion, to his bosom, and holding still in 
his hand a few poor flowers he had gathered the day before. Up 
and on all day, and at evening, passing out of the great zone of 
timber, he came on the bald, thunder- smitten summit ridge, where 
one ruined tree held up its skeleton arms against the sunset, and 
the wind came keen and frosty. So, with failing, feeble legs, 
upward still, towards the region of the granite and the snow ; 
towards the eyrie of the kite and the eagle. 

Brisk as they all were at Garoopna, none were so brisk as Cecil 
and Sam. Charles Hawker wanted to come with them, but Sam 
asked him to go with Jim ; and, long before the others were 
ready, our two had straj^ped their blankets to their saddles, and, 
followed by Sam’s dog Rover, now getting a little grey about the 
nose, cantered off up the river. 

Neither spoke at first. They knew what a solemn task they 
had before them ; and, while acting as though everything depended 
on speed, guessed well that their search was only for a little 
corpse, which, if they had luck, they would find stiff and cold 
under some tree or crag. 

Cecil began i “ Sam, depend on it that child has ciossed the 
river to this side. If he had been on the plains he would have 
been seen fi’om a distance in a few hours.’ 

“ I quite agree,” said Sam. “ Let us go down this side till we 
are opposite the hut, and search for marks by the river side.” 

So they agreed ; and in half an hour were ojDposite the hut, 


282 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


and, riding across to it to ask a few questions, found the poor 
mother sitting on the door-step, with her apron over her head, 
rocking herself to and fro. 

“We have come to help you, mistress,” said Sam. “ How do 
you think he is gone ? ” 

She said, with frequent hursts of grief, that “ some days before 
he had mentioned having seen white children across the water, 
who beckoned him to cross and play ; that she, knowing well that 
they were fairies, or perhaps worse, had warned him solemnly not 
to mind them ; but that she had very little doubt that they had 
helped him over and carried him away to the forest ; and that her 
husband would not believe in his having crossed the river.” 

“ Why, it is not knee-deep across the shallow,” said Cecil. 

“Let us cross again,” said Sam : “he may be drowned, but 
I don’t think it,” 

In a quarter of an hour from starting they found, slightly up 
the stream, one of the child’s socks, which in his hurry to dress 
he had forgotten. Here brave Rover took up the trail like a 
bloodhound, and before evening stopped at the foot of a lofty cliff. 

“ Can he have gone up here ? ” said Sam, as they were brought 
up by the rock. 

“ Most likely,” said Cecil. “ Lost children always climb from 
height to height. I have heard it often remarked by old bush 
hands. Why they do so, God, who leads them, only knows ; but 
the fact is beyond denial.''^'' Ask Rover what he thinks ? ” 

The brave old dog was half-way up, looking back for them. It 
took them nearly till dark to get their horses up ; and, as there 
was no moon, and the way was getting perilous, they determined 
to camp, and start again in the morning. 

They spread their blankets and lay down side by side. Sam 
had thought, from Cecil’s proposing to come with him in pre- 
ference to the others, that he would speak of a subject nearly 
concerning them both, but Cecil went off to sleep and made no 
sign ; and Sam, ere he dozed, said to himself, “ By Jove, if he 
don’t speak this journey, I will. It is unbearable, that we should 
not come to some understanding. Poor Cecil ! ” 

At early dawn they caught up their horses, which had been 
hobbled with the stirrup leathers, and started afresh. Both were 
more silent than ever, and the dog, with his nose to the ground, 

* The Author of this book knew a child who, being lost by his father 
out shooting on one of the flats bordering the Eastern Pyrenees, in Port 
Phillip, on a Sunday afternoon, was found on the Wednesday following, 
dead, at an elevation above the Avoca township of between two and three 
thousand feet. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 283 

led them slowly along the rocky rib of the mountain, ever going 
higher and higher. 

“It is inconceivable,” said Sam, “ that the poor child can 
have come up here. There is Tuckerimbid close to our right, 
five thousand feet above the river. Don’t you think we must he 
mistaken ? ” 

“ The dog disagrees with you,” said Cecil. “ He has some- 
thing before him not veiy far off. Watch him.” 

The trees had become dwarfed and scattered ; they were getting 
out of the region of trees ; the real forest zone was now below 
them, and they saw they were emerging towards a bald elevated 
down, and that a few hundred yards before them was a dead tree, 
on the highest branch of which sat an eagle. 

“ The dog has stopped,” said Cecil ; “ the end is near.” 

“ See,” said Sam, “ there is a handkerchief under the tree.” 

“ That is the boy himself,” said Cecil. 

They were up to him and ofl* in a moment. There he lay, dead 
and stiff, one hand still grasping the flowers he had gathered on 
his last happy play-day, and the other laid as a pillow, between 
the soft cold cheek and the rough cold stone. His midsummer 
holiday was over, his long journey was ended. He had found out 
at last what lay beyond the shining river he had watched so long. 

Both the young men knelt beside him for a moment in silence. 
They had found only what they had expected to find, and yet, now 
that they had found it, they were far more touched and softened 
than they could have thought possible. They stayed in silence a 
few moments, and then Cecil, lifting up his head, said suddenly, — 

“ Sam Buckley ! there can be no debate between us two, with 
this lying here between us. Let us speak now.” 

“ There has never been any debate, Cecil,” said he, “ and there 
never would be, though this little corpse was buried fathoms deep. 
It takes two to make a quarrel, Cecil, and I will not be one.” 

“Sam,” said Cecil, “I love Alice Brentwood better than all 
the world besides.” 

“ I know it.” 

“ And you love her too, as well, were it possible, as I do.” 

“ I know that too.” 

“Why,” resumed Cecil hurriedly, “ has this come to pass? 
Why has it been my unlucky destiny, that the man I love and 
honour above all others should become my rival ? Are there no 
other women in the world ? Tell me, Sam, why is it forced on 
me to choose between my best friend and the woman I love dearer 
than life ? Why has this terrible emergency come between us ? ” 

“ I will tell you why,” said Sam, speaking veiy quietly, as 


284 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


though fearing to awaken the dead : “to teach us to behave like 
men of honour and gentlemen, though our hearts break. That is 
why, Cecil.” 

“ What shall we do ? ” said Cecil. 

“Easily answered,” said Sam. “Let her decide for herself. 
It may be, mind you, that she will have neither of us. There has 
been one living in the house with her lately, far superior in every 
point to you or I. How if she thought fit to prefer him ? ” 

“Halbert!” 

“ Yes, Halbert 1 What more likely ? Let you and I find out 
the truth, Cecil, like men, and abide by it. Let each one ask her 
in his turn what chance he has.” 

“Who first?” 

“ See here,” said Sam ; “ draw one of these pieces of grass out 
of my hand. If you draw the longest piece ask her at once. 
Will you abide by this ? ’ ’ 

He said “ Yes,” and drew — the longest piece. 

“That is well,” said Sam. “And now no more of this at 
present. I will sling this poor little fellow in my blanket and 
caiTy him home to his mother. See, Cecil, what is Rover at ? ” 

Rover was on his hind legs against the tree, smelling at some- 
thing. When they came to look, there was a wee little grey bear 
perched in the hollow of the tree. 

“ What a very strange place for a young bear ! ” said Cecil. 

“ Depend on it,” said Sam, “ that the child had caught it from 
its dam, and brought it up here. Take it home with you, Cecil, 
and give it to Alice.” 

Cecil took the little thing home, and in time it grew to be 
between three and four feet high, a grandfather of bears. The 
magpie protested against his introduction to the establishment, 
and used to pluck billfuUs of hair from his stomach under pretence 
of lining a nest, which was never made. But in spite of this, the 
good gentle beast lived nigh as long as the magpie — long enough 
to be caressed by the waxen fingers of little children, who would 
afterwards gather round their father, and hear how the bear had 
been carried to the mountains in the bosom of the little boy who 
lost his way on the granite ranges, and went to heaven, in the 
year that the bushrangers came down. 

Sam carried the little corpse back in his blanket, and that 
evening helped the father to bury it by the river side. Under 
some fern trees they buried him, on a knoll which looked across 
the river, into the treacherous beautiful forest which had lured 
him to his destruction. 

Alice was very sad for a day or two, and thought and talked 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


2R5 


much about this sad accident, but soon she recovered her spirits 
again. And it fell out that a hare week after this, the party- 
being all out in one direction or another, that Cecil saw Alice 
alone in the garden, tending her flowers, and knew that the time 
was come for him to keep his bargain with Sam and speak to her. 
He felt like a man who was being led to execution ; but screwed 
his courage to the highest point, and went down to where she was 
tying up a rose-tree. 

“Miss Brentwood,” he said, “I am come to petition for a 
flower.” 

“ You shall have a dozen, if you will,” she answered. “ Help 
yourself ; will you have a peony or a sun-flower ? If you have 
not made up your mind, let me recommend a good large yellow 
sun-flower.” 

Here was a pretty beginning ! 

“ Miss Brentwood, don’t laugh at me, but listen to me a 
moment. I love you above all earthly things besides. I worship 
the ground you walk on. I loved you from the first moment 
I saw you. I shall love you as weU, ay, better, if that could be, 
on the day my heart is still, and my hand is cold for ever ; can 
you tell me to hope ? Don’t drive me, by one hasty half-con- 
sidered word, to despair and misery for the rest of my life. Say 
only one syllable of encouragement, and I will bide your time for 
years and years.” 

Alice was shocked and stunned. She saw he was in earnest 
by his looks, and by his hurried, confused way of speaking. She 
feared she might have been to blame, and have encouraged him, 
in her thoughtlessness, more than she ought. “ I will make him 
angry with me,” she said to herself. “ I will treat him to ridi- 
cule. It is the only chance, poor fellow ! ” 

“ Mr. Mayford,” she said, “ if I thought you were in jest, I 
should feel it necessary to tell my father and brother that you 
had been impertinent. I can only believe that you are in earnest, 
and I deeply regret that your personal vanity should have urged 
you to take such an unwaiTantable liberty with a girl you have 
not yet known for ten days.” 

He turned and left her without a word, and she remained 
standing where she was, half inclined to cry, and wondering if she 
had acted right on the spur of the moment — sometimes half 
inclined to believe that she had been unladylike and rude. Wheu 
a thing of this kind takes place, both parties generally put them- 
selves in immediate correspondence with a confidant. Miss Smith 
totters into the apartments of her dearest friend, and falls weeping 
on the sofa, while Jones rushes madly into Brown’s rooms in the 


28 d 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


Temple, and shying his best hat into the coalscuttle, announces 
that there is nothing now left for him but to drown the past in 
debauchery. Whereupon Brown, if he is a good fellow, as all the 
Browns are, produces the whisky and hears all about it. 

So in the present instance two people were informed of what 
had taken place before they went to bed that night ; and those 
two were Jim and Doctor Mulhaus. Alice had stood where Cecil 
had left her, thinking, could she confide it to Mrs. Buckley, and 
ask for advice ? But Mrs. Buckley had been a little cross to her 
that week for some reason, and so she was afraid : and, not 
knowing anybody else well enough, began to cry. 

There was a noise of horses’ feet just beyond the fence, and a 
voice calling to her to come. It was Jim, and, drying her eyes, 
she went out, and he, dismounting, put his arm round her waist 
and kissed her. 

“Why, my beauty,” he said, “who has been making you 
cry?” 

She put her head on his shoulder and began sobbing louder 
than ever. ““ Cecil Mayford,” she said in a whisper. 

“ Well, and what the d 1 has he been at ? ” said Jim, in a 

rather startling tone. 

“Wants to marry me,” she answered, in a whisper, and hid 
her face in his coat. 

“ The deuce doubt he does,” said Jim, “ who does not? What 
did you tell him ? ” 

“I told him that I wondered at his audacity.” 

“Sent him off with a ’flea in his ear, in fact,” said Jim. 
“ Well, quite' right. I suppose you would do the same for any 
man ? ” • 

“ Certainly I should,” she said, looking up. 

“ If Doctor Mulhaus, now,' — eh ? ” 

“I’d box his ears, Jim,” she said, laughing: “ I would, indeed.’'" 

“ Or Sam Buckley; would you box his ears, if he were to — 
— you know?” 

“ Yes,” she said. But there spread over her face a sudden 
crimson blush like the rosy arch which heralds the tropical sun,"' 
which made Jim laugh aloud, 

“ If you dared to say a word, Jim,” she said, “ I would never, 
never — ^ — ” 

Poor Cecil had taken his horse and had meant to ride home, 
hilt came back again at night, “just,” he thought, “ to have one 

* A horrible plagiarism, Mr. Hamlyn— 

“ Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek 

Flushed like the coming of the dayi” — H. K. ■' ’ 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


287 


more look at her, before he entered on some line of life which 
would take him far away from Garoopna and its temptations.” 

The Doctor (who has been rather thrust aside lately in the 
midst of all this love-making and so on) saw that something had 
gone very wrong with Cecil, who w'as a great friend of his, and, 
as he co^d never bear to see a man in distress without helping 
him, he encouraged Cecil to stroll down the garden with him, and 
then kindly and gently asked him what was wrong. 

Cecil told him all, from beginning to end, and added that life 
was over for him, as far as all pleasure and excitement went ; and, 
in short, said what we have all said, or had said to us in our 
time, after a great disappointment in love ; which the Doctor took 
for exactly what it was worth, although poor little Cecil’s distress 
was very keen ; and, remembering some old bygone day when he 
had suffered so himself, he cast about to find some comfort for him. 

“ You will get over this, my boy,” said he, “ if you would only 
believe it.” 

■ ‘‘ Never, never ! ” said Cecil. 

“ Let me tell you a story as we walk up and down. If it 
does not comfort you, it will amuse you. How sweet the orange 
bloom smells ! Listen : — Had not the war broke out so suddenly, 
I should have been married, two months to a day, before the 
battle of Saarbruck. Catherine was a distant cousin, beautiful 
and talented, about ten years my junior. Before Heaven, sir, on 
the word of a gentleman, I never persecuted her with my ad- 
dresses, and if either of them say I did, tell them from me, sir, 
that they lie, and I will prove it on their bodies. Bah ! I was 
forgetting. I, as head of the family, was her guardian, and, 
although my younger brother was nearer her age, I courted 
her, in all honour and humility proposed to her, and was 
accepted with even more willingness than most women con- 
descend to show on such occasions, and received the hearty 
congratulations of my brother. Few women were ever loved 
better than I loved Catherine. Conceive, Cecil, that I loved her 
as well as you love Miss Brentwood, and listen to what follows. 

“ The war-cloud burst so suddenly that, leaving my bride that 
was to be, to the care of my brother, and putting him in charge 
over my property, I hurried off to join the Landsturm, two regi- 
ments of which I had put into a state of efficiency by my sole 
exertions. 

“ You know partly what followed, — in one day an army of 
150,000 men destroyed, the King in flight to Konigsberg, and 
Prussia a province of France. 

‘'‘I fled, wounded badly, desperate and penniless, from that 


288 


THE IlECOLLECTIONS OF 


field. I learnt from the peasants, that what I had tliought to he 
merely a serious defeat was an irretrievable disaster ; and, in 
spite of wounds, hunger, and want of clothes, I held on my way 
towards home. 

“ The enemy were in possession of the country, so I had to travel 
by night alone, and beg from such poor cottages as I dared to 
approach. Sometimes I got a night’s rest, but generally lay 
abroad in the fields. But at length, after eveiy sort of danger 
and hardship, I stood above the broad, sweeping Maine, and saw 
the towers of my o^vn beloved castle across the river, perched as 
of old above the vineyards, looking protectingly down upon the 
little town which was clustered on the river bank below, and 
which owned me for its master. 

“ I crossed at dusk. I had to act with great caution, for I did 
not know whether the French were there or no. I did not make 
myself known to the peasant who ferried me over, further than as 
one from the war, which my appearance was sufficient to prove. I 
landed just below a long high wall which separated the tovii from 
the river, and, ere I had time to decide what I should do first, a 
figure coming out of an archway caught me by the hand, and I 
recognised my own major-domo, my foster-brother. 

“ ‘ I knew you would come back to me,’ he said, ‘ if it was only 
as a pale ghost : though I never believed you dead, and have 
watched here for you night and day to stop you.’ 

“ ‘Are the French in my castle, then ? ’ 

“ ‘ There are worse than the French there,’ he said ; ‘worse than 
the devil Bonaparte himself. Treason, treacheiy, adultery ! ’ 

“ ‘ Who has proved false? ’ I cried. 

“ ‘ Your brother ! False to his king, to his word, to yourself. 
He was in correspondence with the French for six months past, 
and, now that he believes you dead, he is living in sin with her 
who was to have been your wife.’ 

“ I did not cry out or faint, or anything of that sort. I only 
said, ‘ I am going to the castle, Fritz,’ and he came with me. 
My brother had turned him out of the house when he usurped my 
property, but by a still faithful domestic we were admitted, and I, 
knowing every secret passage in my house, came shoeless from 
behind some arras, and stood before them as they sat at supper. 
I was a ghastly sight. I had not shaved for a fortnight, and my 
uniform hung in tatters from my body ; round my head was the 
same bloody white handkerchief with which I had bound up my 
head at Jena. I was deadly pale from hunger, too; and from 
my entering so silently they believed they had seen a ghost. My 
brother rose, and stood pale and horrified, and Catherine fell 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


289 


fainting on the floor. This was all my revenge, and ere my 
brother could speak, I was gone — away to England, where I had 
money in the funds, accompanied by my faithful Fritz, whom 
Mary Hawker’s father buried in Drumston churchyard. 

“ So in one day I lost a brother, a mistress, a castle, a king, 
and a fatherland. I was a ruined, desperate man. And yet I 
lived to see old Blucher with his dirty hoots on the silken sofas at 
the Tuileries, and to become as stout and merry a middle-aged 
man as any Prussian subject in her young Majesty’s dominions.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

HOW TOM TEOUBRIDGE KEPT WATCH FOR THE FIRST TIME. ' 

Human affairs are subject to such an infinite variety of changes 
and complications, that any attempt to lay down particular rules 
for individual action, under peculiar circumstances, must prove a 
failure. Hence I consider proverbs, generally speaking, to he a 
failure, only used by weak-minded men, who have no opinion of 
their own. Thus, if you have a chance of selling your station at 
fifteen shillings, and buying in, close to a new gold-field on the 
same terms, where fat sheep are going to the butcher at from 
eighteen shillings to a pound, butter, eggs, and garden produce at 
famine prices, some dolt unsettles you, and renders you uncertain 
and miserable by saying that ‘‘ rolling stone gathers no moss ; ” 
as if you wanted moss ! Again, having worked harder than the 
Colonial Secretary all the week, and wishing to lie in bed till 
eleven o’clock on Sunday, a man comes into your room at half- 
past seven, on a hot morning, when your only chance is to sleep 
out an hour or so of the heat, and informs you that the “ early 
bird gets the worms.” I had a partner, who bought in after Jim 
Stockhridge was killed, who was always flying this early bird, 
when he couldn’t sleep for musquitoes. I have got rid of him 
now ; but for the two years he was with me, the dearest wish of 
my heart was that my tame magpie Joshua could have had a quiet 
two minutes with that early bird before any one was up to separate 
them. I rather fancy he would have been spoken of as “ the late 
early bird” after that. In short, I consider proverbs as the 
refuge of weak minds. 

The infinite sagacity of the above remarks cannot be ques- 
tioned ; their application may. I will proceed to give it. I have 

20 


290 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


written down the above tirade, nearly, as far as I can guess,' a 
printed pageful (may be a little more, looking at it again), in 
order to call down the wrath of all wise men, if any such have 
done me the honour of getting so far in these volumes, on the 
most trashy and false proverb of the whole : ‘ ‘ Coming events cast 
their shadows before.” 

Now, they don’t, you know. They never did, and never will. 
I myself used to be a strong believer in pre- (what’s the word ? — 
prevarications, predestinations) — no — presentiments ; until I found 
by experience that, although I was always having presentiments, 
nothing ever came of them. Sometimes somebody would walk 
over my grave, and give me a creeping in the back, which, as far 
as I can find out, proceeded from not having my braces properly 
buttoned behind. Sometimes I have heard the death-watch, pro- 
duced by a small spider (may the deuce confound him !), not to 
mention many other presentiments and depressions of spirits, which 
I am now firmly persuaded proceed from indigestion. I am far 
from denying the possibility of a coincidence in point of time 
between a fit of indigestion and a domestic misfortune. I am far 
from denying the possibility of more remarkable coincidences than 
that. I have read in books, novels by the very best French 
authors, how a man, not heard of for twenty years, having, in 
point of fact, been absent during that time in the interior of 
Africa, may appear at Paris at a given moment, only in time to 
save a young lady from dishonour, and rescue a property of ten 
million francs. But these great writers of fiction don’t give us 
any warning whatever. The door is thrown heavily open, and he 
stalks up to the table where the will is lying, quite unexpectedly ; 
stalks up always, or else strides. (How would it be, my dear 
Monsieur Dumas, if, in your next novel, he were to walk in, or 
run in, or hop in, or, say, come in on all-fours like a dog ? — any- 
thing for a change, you know.) And these masters of fiction are 
right — “ Coming events do not cast their shadows before.” 

If they did, how could it happen that Mary Hawker sat there in 
her verandah at Toonarbin singing so pleasantly over her work ? 
And why did her handsome, kindly face light up with such a radiant 
smile when she saw her son Charles come riding along under the 
shadow of the great trees only two days after Cecil Mayford had 
proposed to Alice, and had been refused ? 

He came out of the forest shadow with the westering sunlight 
upon his face, riding slowly. She, as she looked, was proud to 
see what a fine seat he had on his horse, and how healthy and 
handsome he looked. 

He rode round to the back of the house, and she went through 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


291 


to meet him. There was a square court behind, round which the 
house, huts, and store formed a quadrangle, neat and bright, with 
white quartz gravel. By the bye, there was a prospecting party 
who sank two or three shafts in the flat before the house last year ; 
and I saw about eighteen pennyweights of gold which they took 
out. But it did not pay, and is abandoned. (This in passing, 
d'propos of the quartz.) 

“Is Tom Troubridge come home, mother?” said he, as he 
leaned out of the saddle to kiss her. 

“ Not yet, my hoy,” she said. “ I am all alone. I should 
have had a dull week, but I knew you were enjoying yourself with 
your old friend at Garoopna. A great party there, I believe ? ” 

“ I am glad to get home, mother,” he said. “ We were jolly at 
first, but latterly Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford have been 
looking at one another like cat and dog. Stay, though ; let me 
be just ; the fierce looks were all on Cecil Mayford’s side.” 

“ What was the matter ? ” 

“ Alice Brentwood was the matter, I rather suspect,” he said, 
getting off his horse. “ Hold him for me, mother, while I take 
the saddle off.” 

She did as requested. “And so they two are at loggerheads, 
eh, about Miss Brentwood ? Of course. And what sort of a girl 
is she ? ” 

“ Oh, very pretty ; deuced pretty, in fact. But there is one 
there takes my fancy better.” 

“ Who is she ? ” • 

“ Ellen Mayford ; the sweetest little mouse — Dash it all ; look 
at this horse’s back. That comes of that infernal flash military 
groom of Jim’s putting on the saddle without rubbing his back 
down. Where is the bluestone ? ” 

She went in and got it for him as naturally as if it was her 
place to obey, and his to command. She always waited on him, 
as a matter of course, save when Tom Troubridge was with them, 
who was apt to rap out something awkward about Charles being a 
lazy young hound, and about his waiting on himself, whenever he 
saw Mary yielding to that sort of thing. 

“ I wonder when Tom will be back ? ” resumed Charles. 

“ I have been expecting him this last week ; he may come any 
night. I hope he will not meet any of those horrid bush- 
rangers.” 

“ Hope not either,” said Charles ; “they would have to go a 
hundred or two of miles out of their way to make it likely. 
Driving rams is slow work ; they may not be here for a week.” 

“ A nice price he has paid ! ” 


292 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


‘•It will pay in the end, in the quality of the wool,” said 
Charles. 

They sat in silence. A little after, Charles had turned his horse 
out, when at once, without preparation, he said to her, — 

“ Mother, how long is it since my father died ? ” 

She was very much startled. He had scarcely ever alluded to 
his father before ; but she made shift to answer him quietly. 

“ How old are you ? ” 

“ Eighteen ! ” he said. 

“ Then he has been dead eighteen years. He died just as you 
were born. Never mention him, lad. He was a bad man, and 
by God’s mercy you are delivered from him.” 

She rose and went into the house quite cheerfully. Why 
should she not? Why should not a handsome, still young, 
wealthy widow he cheerful ? For she was a widow. For years 
after settling at Toonarbin, she had contrived, once in two or 
three years, to hear some news of her husband. After about ten 
years, she heard that he had been reconvicted, and sentenced to the 
chain-gang for life : and lastly, that he was dead. About his 
being sentenced for life there was no doubt, for she had a piece of 
newspaper which told of his crime, — and a frightful piece of 
villainy it was, — and after that, the report of his death was so 
probable that no one for an instant doubted its truth. Men did 
not live long in the chain-gang, in Van Diemen’s Land, in those 
days, brother. Men would knock out one another’s brains in 
order to get hung, and escape it. Men would cry aloud to the 
judge to hang them out of the way ! It was the most terrible 
punishment known, for it was hopeless. Penal servitude for life, 
as it is now, gives the very faintest idea of what it used to be in 
old times. With a little trouble I could tell you the weight of iron 
carried by each man. I cannot exactly remember, but it would 
strike you as being incredible. They were chained two and two 
together (a horrible association), to lessen the chances of escape ; 
there was no chance of mitigation for good conduct ; there was 
hard mechanical, uninteresting work, out of doors in an inclement 
climate, in all weathers : what wonder if men died off like rotten 
sheep ? And what wonder, too, if sometimes the slightest 
accident, — such as a blow from an overseer, returned by a 
prisoner, produced a sudden rising, unpreconcerted, objectless, 
the result of which were half a dozen murdered men, as many 
lunatic women, and five or six stations lighting up the hill-side, 
night after night, while the whole available force of the colony 
was unable to stop the ruin for months ? 

But to the point. Mary was a widow. When she heard of her 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


293 


husband’s death, she had said to herself, “ Thank God ! ” But 
when she had gone to her room, and was sat a-thinking, she 
seemed to have had another husband before she was bound up 
with that desperate, coining, forging George Hawker — another 
husband bearing the same name ; but surely that handsome, 
curly-headed young fellow, who used to wait for her so patiently in 
the orchard at Drumston, was not the same George Hawker as this 
desperate convict ? She was glad the convict was dead- and out 
of the way ; there was no doubt of that ; but she could still find a 
corner in her heart to be sorry for her poor old lover, — her hand- 
some old lover, — ah me ! 

But that even was passed now, and George Hawker was as one 
who had never lived. Now on this evening we speak of, his 
memory came back just an instant, as she heard the boy speak of 
the father, but it was gone again directly. She called her 
servants, and was telling them to bring supper, when Charles 
looked suddenly in, and said, — ‘‘ Here they are ! ” 

There they were, sure enough, putting the rams into the sheep- 
yard. Tom Troubridge, as upright, brave-looking a man as ever, 
and, thanks to bush-work, none the fatter. William Lee, one of 
our oldest acquaintances, was getting a little grizzled, but other- 
wise looked as broad and as strong as ever. 

They rode into the yard, and Lee took the horses. 

“ Well, cousin,” said Tom ; “I am glad to see you again.” 

“ You are welcome home, Tom ; you have made good speed.” 

Tom and Charles went into the house, and Mary was about 
following them, when Lee said, in so low a tone that it did not 
reach the others, — “ Mrs. Hawker ! ” 

She turned round and looked at him ; she had welcomed him 
kindly when he came into the yard with Tom, and yet he stood 
still on horseback, holding Tom’s horse by the bridle. A stem, 
square -looking figure he was ; and when she looked at his face 
she was much troubled, at — she knew not what. 

“ Mrs. Hawker,” he said, “ can you give me the favour of ten 
minutes’ conversation alone, this evening? ” 

‘‘Surely, William, now ! ” 

“ Not now, — my story is pretty long, and, what is more, ma’am, 
somebody may be listening, and what I have got to tell you must 
be told in no ear but your own.” 

“ You frighten me, Lee ! You frighten me to death.” 

“Don’t get frightened, Mrs. Hawker. Remember if anything 
comes about, that you have good friends about you ; and, that I, 
William Lee, am not the worst of them.” 

Lee went off with the horses, and Mary returned to the house. 


294 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 


What mystery had this man to tell her, “ that no one might hear 
hut she ” ? — very strange and alarming! Was he drunk? — no, 
he was evidently quite sober ; as she looked out once more, she 
could see him at the stable, cool and self-possessed, ordering the 
lads about ; something very strange and terrifying to one who 
had such a dark blot in her life. 

But she went in, and as she came near the parlour, she heard 
Charles and Tom roaring with laughter. As she opened the door 
she heard Tom saying : “ And, by Jove, I sat there like a great 
snipe, face to face with him, as cool and unconcerned as you like. 
I took him for a flash overseer, sporting his salary, and I was as 
thick as you like with him. And, ‘ Matey,’ says I (you see I was 
familiar, he seemed such a jolly sort of bird), ‘ Matey, what station 
are you on?’ ‘ Maraganoa,’ says he. ‘So,’ says I, ‘you’re 
rather young there, ain’t you ? I was by there a fortnight ago.’ 
He saw he’d made a wrong move, and made it worse. ‘ I mean,’ 
says he, ‘ Maraganoa on the Clarence side.’ ‘ Ah I ’ says I, ‘ in 
the Cedar country?’ ‘Precisely,’ says he. And there we sat 
drinking together, and I had no more notion of its being him than 
you would have had.” 

She sat still listening to him, caring nothing. “ Lee’s words 
outside had, she knew not why, struck a chill into her heart, and 
as she listened to Tom’s story, although she could make nothing 
of it, she felt as though getting colder and colder. She shivered, 
although the night was hot. Through the open window she could 
hear all those thousand commingled indistinguishable sounds 
that make the night-life of the bush, with painful distinctness. 
She arose and went to the window. 

The night was dark and profoundly still. The stars were over- 
head, though faintly seen through a haze ; and beyond the narrow 
enclosures in front of the house, the great forest arose like a black 
wall. Tom and Charles went on talking inside, and yet, though 
their voices were loud, she was hardly conscious of hearing them, 
but found herself watching the high dark wood and listening 
to the sound of the frogs in the creek, and the rustle of a 
million crawling things, heard only in the deep stillness of 
night. 

Deep in the forest somewhere, a bough cracked, and fell 
crashing, then all was silent again. Soon arose a wind, a partial 
wandering wind, which came slowly up, and, rousing the quivering 
leaves to life for a moment, passed away ; then again a silence, 
deeper than ever, so that she could hear the cattle and horses 
feeding in the lower paddock, a quarter of a mile ofi* ; then a low 
wail in the wood, then two or three wild weird yells, as of a devil 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


295 


in toi-ment, and a pretty white curlew skirled over the housetop to 
settle on the sheep -wash dam. 

The stillness was awful ; it boded a storm, for behind the forest 
blazed up a sheet of lightning, showing the shape of each fantastic 
elevated bough. Then she turned round to the light, and said, — 
My dear partner, I had a headache, and went to the window. 
What was the story you were telling Charles just now ? Who 
was the man you met in the public-house, who seems to have 
frightened you so? ” 

“ No less a man than Captain Touan, my dear cousin ! ” said 
Tom, leaning back with the air of a man who has made a point, 
and would he glad to hear “ what you have to say to that, sir.” 

“Touan?” repeated Mary. “Why, that’s the great bush- 
ranger, that is out to the north ; is it not ? ” 

“ The same man, cousin ! And there I sat hob and nob with 
him for half an hour in the ‘ Lake George ’ public-house. If Des- 
borough had come in, he’d have hung me for being found in had 
company. Ha ! ha ! ha ! ” 

“ My dear partner,” she said, “ what a terrible escape ! 
Suppose he had risen on you ? ” 

“ Why I’d have broken his hack, cousin,” said Tom, “unless 
my right hand had forgot her cunning. He is a fine man of his 
weight : but, Lord, in a struggle for life and death, I could break 
his neck, and have one more claim on heaven for doing so ; for he 
is the most damnable villain that ever disgraced God’s earth, and 
that is the truth. That man, cousin, in one of his devil’s raids, 
tore a baby from its mother’s breast by the leg, dashed its brains 
out against a tree, and then — I daren’t tell a woman what 
happened.”* 

“Tom! Tom!” said Mary, “how can you talk of such 
things ? ” 

“ To show you what we have to expect if he comes this way, 
cousin ; that is all.” 

“ And is there any possibility of such a thing ? ” asked Mary. 

“Why not? Why should he not pay us the compliment of 
looking round this way ? ” 

“ Why do they call him Touan, Tom ? ” asked Charles. 

“Can’t you see?” said Tom; “the Touan, the little gi'ey 
flying squirrel, only begins to fly about at night, and slides down 

* Tom was confusing Touan with Michael Howe. The latter actually 
did commit this frightful atrocity ; but I never heard that the former 
actually combined the two crimes in this way. We must remember that 
barely four years from this present time (1858) a crime, exceeding this in 
atrocity, was committed in Van Diemen’s Land, in open day. I refer to 
the murder of a lad returning from school. 


296 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


from his bough sudden and sharp. This fellow has made some of 
liis most terrible raids at night, and so he got the name of 
Touan.” 

“ God deliver us from such monsters ! ” said Mary, and left 
the room. 

She went into the kitchen. Lee sat there smoking. When 
she came in he rose, and, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, 
touched his forehead and stood looking at her. 

“ Now then, old friend,” she said, “ come here.” 

He followed her out. She led the way swiftly, through the 
silent night, across the yard, over a small paddock, up to the 
sheep-yard beside the woolshed. There she turned shortly round, 
and, leaning on the fence, said abruptly — 

“ No one can hear us here, William Lee. Now, what have you 
to say ? ” 

He seemed to hesitate a moment, and then began : “Mrs. Haw- 
ker, have I been a good servant to you ? ” 

“ Honest, faithful, kindly, active ; who could have been a better 
servant than you, William Lee ! A friend, and not a servant ; 
God is my witness ; now then ? ” 

“I am glad to hear you say so,” he answered. “I did you 
a terrible injury once ; I have often been sorry for it since I knew 
you, but it cannot be mended now.” 

“ Since you knew me ? ” she said. “ Why, you have known 
me ever since I have been in the country, and you have never 
injured me since then, surely.” 

“ Ay, but at home,” he said. “ In England. In Devon- 
shire.” 

“ My God ! ” 

“I was your husband’s companion in aU his earlier villainies. 
I suggested them to him, and egged him on. And now, mind 
you, after twenty years, my punishment is coming.” 

She could only say still, “ My God ! ” while her throat was as 
dry as a kiln. 

“ Listen to what I have got to tell you now. Hear it all in 
order, and try to bear up, and use your common sense and 
courage. As I said before, you have good friends around you, 
and you at least are innocent.” 

“ Guilty ! guilty I ” she cried. “ Guilty of my father’s death ! 
Read me this horrible riddle, Lee.” 

“Wait and listen,” said Lee, unable to forego, even in her 
terror, the great pleasure that all his class have of spinning a yarn, 
and using as many words as possible. “ See here. We came by 
Lake George, you know, and heard everywhere accounts of a 


GEOFFIiY HAMLYN. 


297 


great gang of bushrangers being out. So we didn’t feel exactly 
comfortable, you see. AVe came by a bush public-house, and Mr. 
Troubridge stops, and says he, ‘ Well, lad, suppose we yard these 
rams an hour, and take drink in the parlour?’ ‘ All right,’ 
I says, with a wink, ‘ but the tap for me, if you please. That’s 
my place, and I’d like to see if I can get any news of the where- 
abouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they’re 
one way, I’d as lief be another.’ ‘All right,’ says he. So in 
I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there "but one man, 
drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and 
one of Old Tom ; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy ; when 
in comes an old chap as I knew for a lag in a minute. AVell, he 
and I cottoned together, and found out that we had been prisoners 
together five -and- twenty years agone. And so I shouted for him, 
and he for me, and at last I says, ‘ Butty,’ says I, ‘ who are these 
chaps round here on the lay ’ (meaning. Who are the bush- 
rangers) ? And he says, ‘ Young ’uns — no one as we know.’ 
And I says, ‘ Not likely, matey ; I’ve been on the square this 
twenty year.’ ‘ Same here,’ says the old chap ; ‘ give us your 
flipper. And now,’ says he, ‘ what sort of a cove is your boss ’ 
(meaning Mr. Troubridge) ? ‘ One of the real riyht sort,' says I, 

‘ Then see here,’ says he, ‘ I’U tell you something : the head man 
of that there gang is at this minute a-sitting yarning with your 
boss in the parlour.’ ‘ The devil ! ’ says I. ‘ Is so,’ says he, 
‘ and no flies.’ So I swings out, ‘ Mr. Troubridge, those sheep will 
be out ; ’ and out he came running, and I whispers to him, ‘ Mind 
the man you’re sitting with, and leave me to pay the score.’ So 
he goes back, and presently he sings out, ‘ Will, have you got 
any money ? ’ And I says, ‘ Yes, thirty shillings.’ ‘ Then,’ says 
he, ‘ pay for this, and come along.’ And thinks I, I’ll go in and 
have a look at this great new captain of bushrangers ; so I goes to 
the parlour door, and now who do you think I saw ? ” 

“ I know,” she said. “ It was that horrible viUain they call 
Touan.” 

“ The same man,” he answered. “ Do you know who he is ? ” 

She found somehow breath to say, “ How can I? How is it 
possible ? ” 

“ I will tell you,” said Lee. “ There, sitting in front of Mr. 
Troubridge, hardly altered in all these long years, sat George 
Hawker, formerly of Drumston, — your husband ! ” 

She gave a low cr}^, and beat the hard rail with her head till it 
bled. Then, turning fiercely round, she said, in a voice hoarse 
and strangely altered, — 

“ Have you anything more to tell me, you croaking raven ? ” 


298 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


He had something more to tell, hut he dared not speak now. 
So he said, “ Nothing at present, hut if laying down my life ” 

She did not wait to hear him, hut, with her hands clasped 
above her head, she turned and walked swiftly towards the house. 
She could not cry, or sob, or rave; she could only say, “Let it 
fall on me, 0 God, on me ! ” over and over again. 

Also, she was far too crushed and stunned to think precisely 
what it was she dreaded so. It seemed afterwards, as Frank 
Maberly told me, that she had an indefinable horror of Charles 
meeting his father, and of their coming to know one another. 
She half feared that her husband would appear and carry away 
her son with him, and even if he did not, the lad was reckless 
enough as it was, without being known and pointed at through the 
country as the son of Hawker the bushranger. 

These were after-thoughts, however ; at present she leaned 
giddily against the house- side, trying, in the wild hurrying night- 
rack of her thoughts, to distinguish some tiny star of hope, or 
even some glimmer of reason. Impossible ! Nothing but swift, 
confused clouds everywhere, driving wildly on, — ^whither ? 

But a desire came upon her to see her boy again, and compare 
his face to his father’s. So she slid quietly into the room where 
Tom and Charles were still talking together of Tom’s adventure, 
and sat looking at the hoy, pretending to work. As she came in, 
he was laughing loudly at something. And his face was alive and 
merry. “He is not like what his father was at his age,” she 
said. 

But they continued their conversation. “ And now, what sort 
of man was he, Tom ? ” said Charles. “ Was he like any one 
you ever saw ? ” 

“ Why, no. Stay, let’s see. Do you know, he was something 
like you in the face.” 

“ Thank you ! ” said Charles, laughing. “ Wait till I get 
a chance of paying you a compliment, old fellow. A powerful 
fellow — eh ? ” 

“ Why, yes, — a tough-looking subject,” said Tom. 

“ I shouldn’t have much chance with him, I suppose ? ” 

“ No ; he’d be too powerful for you, Charley.” 

A change came over his face, a dark, fierce look. Mary could 
see the likeness now plain enough, and even Tom looked at him 
for an instant with a puzzled look. 

“Nevertheless,” continued Charles, “I would have a turn 
with him if I met him. I’d try what six inches of cold steel 
between ” 

“ Forbear, boy ! Would you have thereof fall in and crush 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


299 


you dead ? ” said Mary, in a voice that appalled both of them. 
“ Stop such foolish talk, and pray that we may be delivered from 
the very sight of these men, and suffered to get away to our graves 
in peace, without any more of these horrors and surprises. I 
would sooner,” she said,' increasing in rapidity as she went on, “I 
would far sooner live like some one I have heard of, with a sword 
above his head, than thus. If he comes and looks on me, I shall 
die.” 

She had risen and stood in the firelight, deadly pale. Somehow 
one of the band« of her long black hair had fallen down, and half 
covered her face. She looked so unearthly that, coupling her 
appearance with the wild, senseless words she had been uttering, 
Tom had a horrible suspicion that she was gone mad. 

“ Cousin,” he said, “ let me beseech you to go to bed. 
Charles, run for Mrs. Barker. Mary,” he added, as soon as he 
was gone, “ come away, or you’ll be saying something before that 
boy you’ll be sorry for. You’re hysterical ; that’s what is the 
matter with you. I am afraid we have frightened you by our talk 
about bushrangers.” 

“Yes, that is it! that is it ! ” she said ; and then, suddenly, 
“ Oh ! my dear old friend, you will not desert me ? ” 

“ Never, Mary ; but why ask such a question now ? ” 

“ Ask Lee,” she said, and the next moment Mrs. Barker, the 
housekeeper, came bustling in with smelling-salts, and so on, to 
minister to a mind diseased. And Mary was taken off to bed. 

“ What on earth can be the matter with her, cousin Tom? ” 
said Charles, when she was gone. 

“ She is out of sorts, and got hysterical : that’s what it is,” 
said Tom. 

“ What odd things she said 1 ” 

“ Women do when they are hysterical. It’s nothing more than 
that.” 

But Mrs. Barker came in with a different opinion. She said 
that Mary was very hot and restless, and had very little doubt that 
a fever was coming on. “ Terribly shaken she had been,” said 
Mrs. Barker, “ hoped nothing was wrong.” 

“ There’s something decidedly wrong, if your mistress is going 
to have a fever,” said Tom. “ Charley, do you think Doctor 
Mulhaus is at Baroona or Garoopna ? ” 

“ Up at the Major’s,” said Charles. “ Shall I ride over for 
him ? There will be a good moon in an hour.” 

“ Yes,” said Tom, “ and fetch him over at once. Tell him we 
think it’s a fever, and he will know what to bring. Ride like 
h — 1, Charley.” 


300 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


As soon as he was alone, lie began thinking. “ What the (loose 
is the matter ? ” was his first exclamation, and, after half-an-hour’s 
cogitation, only had arrived at the same point, “ What the (loose 
is the matter ? ” Then it flashed across him, what did she mean 
hy “ ask Lee ” ? Had she any meaning in it, or was it nonsense ? 
There was an easy solution for it ; namely, to ask Lee. And so 
arising he went across the yard to the kitchen. 

Lee was bending low over the fire, smoking. “ William,” said 
Tom, “ I want to see you in the parlour.” 

“ I was thinking of coming across myself,” said Lee. “ In fact 
I should have come when I had finished my pipe.” 

“ Bring your pipe across, then,” said Tom. “ Girl, take in 
some hot water and tumblers.” 

“Now, Lee,” said Tom, as soon as Lee had gone through the 
ceremony of “ Well, here’s my respex, sir,” “ Now, Lee, you have 
heard how ill the mistress is.” 

“ I have indeed, sir,” said he ; “ and very sorry I am, as I am 
partly the cause of it.” 

“All that simplifies matters. Will, considerably,” said Tom. 
“ I must tell you that when I asked her what put her in that state, 
she said, ‘ Ask Lee.’ ” 

“ Shows her sense, sir. What she means is, that you ought to 
hear what she and I have heard ; and I mean to tell you more 
than I have her. If she knew everything, I am afraid it would 
kill her.” 

“ Ay ! I know nothing as yet, you know.” 

Lee in the first place put him in possession of what we already 
know — the fact of Hawker’s reappearance, and his identity with 
“ The Touan ” ; then he paused. 

“ This is very astonishing, and very terrible, Lee,” said he. 
“ Is there anything further ? ” 

“ Yes, the worst. That man has followed us home ! ” 

Tom had exhausted all his expressions of astonishment and 
dismay before this ; so now he could only give a long whistle, and 
say, “ Followed us home ? ” 

“Followed us home!” said Lee. . “ As we were passing the 
black swamp, not two miles from here, this very morning, I saw 
that man riding parallel with us through the bush.” 

“ Why did not you tell me before ? ” 

“Because Iliad not made up my mind how to act. First I 
resolved to tell the mistress ; that I did. Then after I had 
smoked a pipe, I resolved to tell you, and that I did, and new 
here we are, you see.” 

That was undeniable. There they were, with about as pretty a 


GEOFFKY HAMIA’N. 


801 


complication of mischief to unravel as two men could wish to 
have. Tom felt so foolish and nonplussed, that he felt inclined 
to laugh at Lee, when he said, “ Here we are.” It so exactly 
expressed the state of the case ; as if he had said, “ All so and so 
has happened, and a deuce of a job it is, and here sit you and I, 
to deliberate what’s to be done with regard to so and so.” 

He did not laugh, however ; he bit his lip, and stopped it. 
Then he rose, and, leaning his great shoulders against the mantel- 
piece, stood before the fireless grate, and looked at Lee. Lee 
also looked at him, and I think that each one thought what a 
splendid specimen of his style the other was. If they did not 
think so, “ they ought to it,” as the Londoners say. But neither 
spoke a few minutes ; then Tom said, — 

“ Lee, Will Lee, though you came to me a free man, and have 
served me twenty years, or thereabouts, as free man, I don’t 
conceal from myself the fact that you have been convict. Pish, 
man I don’t let us mince matters now, — a lag.” 

Lee looked him full in the face, without changing comitenance, 
and nodded. 

“ Convicted more than once, too,” continued Tom. 

“ Three times,” said Lee. 

“ Ah ! ” said Tom. “ And if a piece of work was set before 
me to do, which required pluck, honesty, courage, and cunning, 
and one were to say to me, ‘ Who will you have to help you ? ’ I 
would answer out boldly, ‘ Give me Will Lee, the lag ; my old 
friend, who has served me so true and hearty these twenty 
years.’ ” 

“And you’d do right, sir,” said Lee quietly. And rising up, 
he stood beside Tom, wdth one foot on the fender, bending down 
and looking into the empty grate. 

“ Now, Will,” said Tom, turning round and laying his hand on 
his shoulder, “ this fellow has followed us home, having found out 
who we were. Why has he done so ? ” 

“Evident,” said Lee, “ to work on tne fears of the mistress, 
and get some money from her.” 

“ Good ! ” said Tom. “Well answered. We shall get to the 
bottom of our difficulty like this. Only answer the next question 
as well, and I will call you a Poly — , Poly — ; d — n the Greek.” 

“ Not such a bad name as that, I hope, sir,” said Lee, smiling. 

“ Who might she have been? A bad un, I expect. You don’t 
happen to refer to Hobart-town Polly, did you, sir? ” 

“ Hold your tongue, you villain,” said Tom, “or you’ll make 
me laugh ; and these are not laughing times.” 

Well, what is your question, sir? ” asked Lee. 


302 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ Why, simply this : What are we to do ? ” 

“ I’ll tell you,” said Lee, speaking in an animated whisper. 
“ Watch, watch, and watch again, till you catch him. Tie him 
tight, and hand him over to Captain Desborough. He may be 
about the place to-night : he wiU be sure to be. Let us watch to- 
night, you and I, and for many nights, till we catch him.” 

“ But,” whispered Tom, “ he will be hung.” 

“ He has earned it,” said Lee. ‘‘ Let him be hung.” 

“ But he is her husband,” urged Tom, in a whisper. “He is 
that boy’s father. I cannot do it. Can’t we buy him off ? ” 

“Yes,” answered Lee in the same tone, “till his money is 
gone. Then you will have a chance of doing it again, and again, 
all your life.” 

“ This is a terrible dilemma,” said Tom ; and added in a per- 
plexity almost comical, “Drat the girl! Why didn’t she marry 
poor old Jim Stockbridge, or sleepy Hamlyn, or even your humble 
servant ? Though, in all honour I must confess that I never 
asked her, t.s those two others did. No ! I’ll tell you what, Lee : 
we will watch for him, and catch him if we can. After that we 
will think what is to be done. By the bye, I have been going to 
ask you : — do you think he recognised you at the public-house 
there ? ” 

“ That puzzles me,” said Lee. “ He looked me in the face, 
but I could not see that he did. I wonder if he recognised you ? ” 

“ I never saw him in my life before,” said Tom. “It is very 
likely that he knew me, though. I was champion of Devon and 
Cornwall, you know, before little Abraham Cann kicked my legs 
from under me that unlucky Easter Monday. (The deuce curl his 
hair for doing it I) I never forgave him till I heard of that fine 
bit of play with Polkinghorn. Yes ! he must have known me.” 

Lee lit the fire, while Tom, blowing out the candles, drew the 
curtains, so that any one outside could not see into the room. 
Nevertheless, he left the French window open, and then went out- 
side, and secured all the dogs in the dog-house. 

The night was wonderfully still and dark. As he paused before 
entering the house, he could hear the bark falling from the trees 
a quarter of a mile off, and the opossums scratching and snapping 
little twigs as they passed from bough to bough. Somewhere, 
apparently at an immense distance, a morepork was chanting his 
monotonous cry. The frogs in the creek were silent even, so hot 
was the night. “ A good night for watching,” said he to Lee 
when he came in. “ Lie you down ; I’ll take the first watch.” 

They blew out the candle, and Lee was in the act of lying down, 
when he arrested himself, and held up his finger to Tom. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


303 


They both listened, motionless and in silence, until they could 
hear the spiders creeping on the ceiling. There it was again ! a 
stealthy step on the gravel. 

Troubridge and Lee crouched down breathless. One minute, 
two, five, but it did not come again. At length they both moved, 
as if by concert, and Lee said, “ ’Possum.” 

“Not a bit,” said Troubridge; and then Lee lay down again, 
and slept in the light of the flickering fire. One giant arm was 
thrown around his head, and the other hung dovui in careless 
grace ; the great chest was heaved up, and the head thrown back ; 
the seamed and rugged features seemed more stern and marked 
than ever in the chiaroscuro ; and the whole man was a picture of 
reckless strength such as one seldom sees. Tom had dozed and 
had awoke again, and now sat thinking, “ What a terrible tough 
customer that fellow would be ! ” when suddenly he crouched on 
the floor, and, reaching out his hand, touched Lee, who woke, 
and silently rolled over with his face towards the window. 

There was no mistake this time — that was no opossum. There 
came the stealthy step again ; and now, as they lay silent, the 
glass-door was pushed gently open, showing the landscape beyond. 
The gibbous moon was just rising over the forest, all blurred 
with streaky clouds, and between them and her light they could 
see the figure of a man, standing inside the room. 

Tom could wait no longer. He started up, and fell headlong 
with a crash over a little table that stood in his way. They both 
dashed into the garden, but only in time to hear flying footsteps, 
and immediately after the gallop of a horse, the echoes of which 
soon died away, and all was still. 

“ Missed him, by George ! ” said Lee. “ It was a precious 
close thing, though. What could he mean by coming into the 
house, eh ? ” 

“ Just as I expected ; trying to get an interview with the 
mistress. He will be more cautious in future, I take it.” 

“ I wonder if he will try again ? ” 

“ Don’t know,” said Troubridge ; “he might : not to-night, 
however.” 

They went in and lay do^vn again, and Troubridge was soon 
asleep ; and very soon that sleep was disturbed by dreadful dreams. 
At one time he thought he -was riding madly through the bush for 
his bare life ; spurring on a tired horse, which was failing every 
moment more and more. But always through the tree-stems on 
his right he saw glancing, a ghost on a white horse, which kept 
pace with him, do what he would. Now he was among the preci- 
pices on the ranges. On his left, a lofty inaccessible cliff ; on the 


304 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


right, a frightful blue abyss ; while the slaty soil kept sliding from 
beneath his horse’s feet. Behind him, unseen, came a phantom,, 
always gaining on him, and driving him along the giddiest wallaby 
tracks. If he could only turn and face it, he might conquer, but 
he dare not. At length the path grew narrower and narrower, 
and he turned in desperation and awoke — woke to see in the dim 
morning light a dark figure bending over him. He sprang up, and 
clutched it by the throat. 

“ A most excellent fellow this ! ” said the voice of Dr. Mulhaus. 
“ He sends a frantic midnight message for his friend to come to 
him, regardless of personal convenience and horsefiesh : and when 
this friend comes quietly in, and tries to wake him without dis- 
turbing the sick folks, he seizes him by the throat and nearly 
throttles him.” 

“ I beg a thousand pardons. Doctor,” said Tom ; “I had been 
dreaming, and I took you for the devil. I am glad to find my 
mistake.” 

“ You have good reason,” said the Doctor ; “ but now, how is 
the patient ? ” 

“ Asleep at present, I believe ; the housekeeper is with her.” 

“ What is the matter with her ? ” 

“ She has had a great blow. It has shaken her intellect, I am 
afraid.” 

“ What sort of a blow ? ” asked the Doctor. 

Tom hesitated. He did not know whether to teU him or not. 

‘‘Nay,” said the Doctor, “ you had better let me know. I can 
help then, you know. Now, for instance, has she heard of her 
husband?” 

“ She has. Doctor. How on earth came you to guess that ? ” 

“ A mere guess, though I have always thought it quite possible, 
as the accounts of his death were very uncertain.” 

Tom then set to work, and told the Doctor all that w'e know. 
He looked very grave. “ This is far worse than I had thought,” 
he said, and remained thoughtful. 

Mary awoke in a fever and delirious. They kept Charles as 
much from her as possible, lest she should let drop some hint of 
the matter to the boy ; but even in her delirium she kept her secret 
well ; and towards the evening the Doctor, finding her quieter, 
saddled his horse, and rode away ten miles to a township, where 
resided a drunken surgeon, one of the greatest blackguards in thcs 
country. 

The surgeon was at home. He was drunk, of course ; he always 
was, but hardly more so to-day than usual. So the Doctor hoped 
for success in his object, which was to procure a certain drug which 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


305 


was neither in the medicine-chest at the Buckleys’ nor at Toonar- 
bin ; and putting on his sweetest smile when the surgeon came to 
the door, he made a remark about the beauty of the weather, to 
which the other very gruffly responded. 

“ I come to beg a favour,” said Dr. Mulhaus. “ Can you let 
me have a little — so and so ? ” 

“ Bee you d d first,” was the polite reply. “ A man comes 

a matter of fourteen thousand miles, makes a pretty little practice, 
and then gets it cut into by a parcel of ignorant foreigners, whose 
own country is too hot to hold them. And not content with this, 
they have the brass to -ask for the loan of a man’s drugs. As I 

said before. I’ll see you d d first, and then I won’t.” And 

so saying, he slammed the door. 

Doctor Mulhaus was beside himself with rage. For the first 
and last time since I have kno'WTi him he forgot his discretion, and 
instead of going away quietly, and treating the man with contempt, 
he began kicking at the door, calling the man a scoundrel, &c., 
and between the intervals of kicking, roaring through the keyhole, 
“ Bring out your diploma ; do you hear, you impostor ? ” and then 
fell to work kicking again. “ Bring out your forged diploma, will 
you, you villain ? ” 

This soon attracted the idlers from the public-house : a couple 
of sawyers, a shepherd or two, all tipsy of course, except one of the 
sawyers, who was drunk. The drunken sawyer at length made 
out to his own complete satisfaction that Dr. Mulhaus’ wife was in 
labour, and that he was come for the surgeon, who was probably 
drunk and asleep inside. So, being able to sympathise, having 
had his wife in the straw every thirteen months regularly for the 
last fifteen years, he prepared to assist, and for this purpose took 
a stone about half a hundredweight, and coming behind the Doctor, 
when he was in full kick, he balanced himself with difficulty, and 
sent it at the lock with all the force of his arm, and of course 
broke the door in. In throwing the stone, he lost his balance, came 
full butt against Dr. Mulhaus, propelled him into the passage, into 
the arms of the surgeon, who was rushing out infuriated to defend 
his property, and down went the three in the passage together, 
the two doctors beneath, and the drunken sawyer on the top of 
them. 

The drunken surgeon, if, to use parliamentary language, he will 
allow me to call him so, was of course underneath the others ; but, 
being a Londoner, and consequently knowing the use of his fists, 
ere he went down delivered a “ one, two,” straight from the 
shoulder in our poor dear Doctor’s face, and gave him a most 
disreputable black eye, besides cutting his upper lip open. This 


306 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


our Doctor, being, you must remember, a foreigner, and not having 
the rules of the British Ring before his eyes, resented by getting 
on the top of him, taking him round the throat, and banging the 
back of his head against the brick floor of the passage, until he 
began to goggle his eyes and choke. Meanwhile the sawyer, 
exhilarated beyond measure in his drunken mind at having raised 
a real good promising row, having turned on his back, lay pro- 
cumbent upon the twain, and kicking everything soft and human 
he came across with his heels, struck up “ The Bay of Biscay, 
Oh,” until he was dragged forth by two of his friends ; and being 
in a state of wild excitement, ready to flght the world, hit his 
own mate a violent blow in the eye, and was only quieted by 
receiving a sound thrashing, and being placed in a sitting posture 
in the verandah of the public-house, from which he saw Doctor 
Mulhaus come forth from the surgeon’s with rumpled feathers, but 
triumphant. 

I am deeply grieved to have recorded the above scene, but I 
could not omit it. Having undertaken to bring the character of 
that very noble gentleman. Doctor Mulhaus, before my readers, I 
was forced not to omit this. As a general rule, he was as self- 
contained, as calm and as frigid as the best Englishman among 
us. But under all this there was, to speak in carefully- selected 
scientific language, a substratum of pepper-box, which has been 
apparent to me on more than one occasion. I have noticed the 
above occasion perforce. Let the others rest in oblivion. A man 
so true, so wise, so courteous, and so kindly, needs not my poor 
excuses for having once in a way made a fool of himself. He will 
read this, and he will be angry with me for a time, but he knows 
well that I, like all who knew him, say heartily, God bless you, 
old Doctor ! 

But the consequences of the above were, I am sorry to say, 
eminently disastrous. The surgeon got a warrant against Doctor 
Mulhaus for burglary with violence, and our Doctor got a warrant 
against him for assault with intent to rob. So there was the deuce 
to pay. The affair got out of the hands of the bench. In fact 
they sent both parties for trial (what do you think of that, my Lord 
Campbell ?) in order to get rid of the matter, and at sessions, the 
surgeon swore positively that Dr. Mulhaus had, assisted by a 
convict, battered his door down with stones in open day, and nearly 
murdered him. Then in defence Doctor Mulhaus called the 
sa^vyer, who, as it happened, had just completed a contract for 
fencing for Mrs. Mayford, the proceeds of which bargain he was 
spending at the public-house when the thing happened, and had 
just undertaken another for one of the magistrates ; having also 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


307 


large family dependent on him ; being, too, a man who prided 
himself in keeping an eye to windward, and being slightly confused 
by a trifling attack of delirium tremens (diddleums, he called it) : 
he, I say, to our Doctor’s confusion and horror, swore positively 
that he never took a stone in his hand on the day in question j 
that he never saw a stone for a week before or after that date ; 
that he^ did not deny having rushed into the passage to assist the 
complainant (drunken surgeon), seeing him being murdered by 
defendant ; and, lastly, that he was never near the place on the 
day specified. So it would have gone hard with our Doctor, had 
not his Honour called the jury’s attention to the discrepancies in 
this witness’s evidence ; and when Dr. Mulhaus was acquitted, 
delivered a stinging reproof to the magistrates for wasting public 
time by sending such a trumpery case to a jury. But, on the other 
hand. Dr. Mulhaus’ charge of assault with intent fell dead ; so that 
neither party had much to boast of. 

The night or so after the trial was over, the Doctor came back 
to Toonarhin, in what he intended for a furious rage. But, having 
told Tom Troubridge the whole affair, and having unluckily caught 
Tom’s eye, they two went off into such hearty fits of laughter that 
poor Mary, now convalescent, hut still in bed, knocked at the wall 
to know what was the mMter. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

WHICH IS THE LAST CHAPTER BUT ONE IN THE SECOND VOLUME. 

The state of terror and dismay into which poor Mary Hawker was 
thrown on finding that her husband, now for many years the hete 
noire of her existence, was not only alive, hut promising fairly to 
cause her more trouble than ever he did before, superadded, let 
me say, for mere .truth’s sake, to a slight bilious attack, brought 
on by good living and want of exercise, threw her into a fever, 
from which, after several days’ delirium, she rose much shattered, 
and looking suddenly older. All this time the Doctor, like a 
trusty dog, had kept his watch, and done more, and with a better 
will than any paid doctor would have been likely to do. He was 
called away a good deal by the prosecution arising out of that 
unhappy affair with the other doctor, and afterwards with a 
prosecution for perjury, which he brought against the sawyer; 
hut he was generally hack at night, and was so kind,- so attentive, 


308 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OP 


and so skilful that Mary took it into her head, and always affirmed 
afterwards, that she owed her life to him. 

She was not one to receive any permanent impression from 
anything. So now, as day by day she grew stronger, she tried to 
undervalue the mischief which had at first so terrified her, and 
caused her illness ; — tried, and with success, in broad daylight ; 
but, in the silent dark nights, as she lay on her lonely bed, she 
would fully appreciate the terrible cloud that hung over her, and 
would weep and beat her pillow, and pray in her wild fantastic 
way to be delivered from this frightful monster, cut off from com- 
munion with all honest men by his unutterable crimes, but who, 
nevertheless, she was bound to love, honour, and obey, till death 
should part her from him. 

Mrs. Buckley, on the first news of her illness, had come up and 
taken her quarters at Toonarbin, acting as gentle a nurse as man 
or woman could desire to have. She took possession of the house, 
and managed eveiything. Mrs. Barker, the housekeeper, the 
only one who did not submit at once to her kindly rule, protested, 
obstructed, protocoUed, presented an ultimatum, and, at last, was 
so ill advised as to take up arms. There was a short campaign, 
lasting only one morning, — a decisive battle, — and Mrs. Barker 
was compelled to sue for peace. “ Had Mr. Troubridge been 
true to himself,” she said, “ she would never have submitted;” 
but, having given Tom warning, and Tom, in a moment of irrita- 
tion, having told her, without hesitation or disguise, to go to the 
devil (no less), she bowed to the circumstances, and yielded. 

Agnes Buckley encouraged Dr. Mulhaus, too, in his legal 
affairs, and, I fear, was the first person who proposed the pro- 
secution for perjury against the sawyer : a prosecution, however, 
which failed, in consequence of his mate and another friend, who 
was present at the affair, coming forward to the sawyer’s rescue, 
and getting into such a labyrinth and mist of peijuiy, that the 
Bench (this happened just after quarter sessions) positively refused 
to hear anything more on either side. Altogether, Agnes Buckley 
made herself so agreeable, and kept them all so alive, 'that Tom 
wondered how he had got on so long without her. 

At the end of three weeks Mary was convalescent ; and one day, 
when she was moved into the verandah, Mrs. Buckley beside her, 
Tom and the Doctor sitting on the step smoking, and Charles 
sleepily reading aloud “Hamlet,” with a degree of listlessness 
and want of appreciation unequalled, I should say, by any reader 
before ; at such time, I say, there entered suddenly to them a 
little cattle-dealer, as brimful of news as an egg of meat. Little 
Bmiiside it was : a man about eight stone nothing, who always 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


309 


wore top-boots and other people’s clothes. As he came in, Charles 
recognised on his legs a pair of cord breeches of his own, with a 
particular grease patch on the thigh : a pair of breeches he had 
lent ^ Burnside, and which Burnside had immediately got altered 
to his own size. A good singer was Burnside. A man who could 
finish his bottle of brandy, and not go to bed in his boots. A man 
universally liked and trusted. An honest, hearty, little fellow, 
yet one who always lent or spent his money as fast as he got it, 
and was as poor as Job. The greatest vehicle of news in the 
district, too. “ Snowy river Times,” he used to be called. 

After the usual greetings, Tom, seeing he was bursting with 
something, asked him, “ What’s the news ? ” 

Burnside was in the habit of saying that he was like the Lord 
Mayor’s fool — fond of everything that was good. But his greatest 
pleasure, the one to which he would sacrifice everything, was 
retailing a piece of news. This W’as so great an enjoyment with 
him that he gloried in dwelling on it, and making the most of it. 
He used to retail a piece of news, as a perfect novel, in three 
volumes. In his first he would take care to ascertain that you 
were acquainted with the parties under discussion ; and, if you 
were not, make you so, throwing in a few anecdotes illustrative of 
their characters. In his second, he would grow discursive, giving 
an episode or two, and dealing in moral reflections and knowledge 
of human nature rather largely. And in his third he would come 
smash, crash down on you with the news itself, and leave you 
gasping. 

He followed this plan on the present occasion. He answered 
Tom’s question by asking, — 

“ Do you know Desborough ? ” 

“ Of course I do,” said Tom ; “ and a noble good fellow he is.” 

“ Exactly,” said Burnside ; “ super of police ; distinguished in 
Indian wars ; nephew of my Lord Covetown. An Irishman is 
Desborough, but far from objectionable.” 

This by way of first volume : now comes his second : — 

“ Now, sir, I, although a Scotchman born, and naturally proud 
of being so, consider that until these wretched national distinctions 
between the three great nations are obliterated we shall never get 
on, sir ; never. That the Scotch, sir, are physically and intel- 
lectually superior ” 

“ Physically and intellectually the devil,” burst in Tom. ‘‘ Pick 
out any dozen Scotchmen, and I’ll find you a dozen Londoners 
who will fight them, or deal with them till they’d be glad to get 
over the borders again. As for the Devon and Cornish lads, find 
me a Scotchman who will put me on my back, and I’ll write you 


810 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


a cheque for a hundred pounds, my boy. We English opened the 
trade of the world to your little two millions and a half up in the 
north there ; and you, being pretty well starved out at home, have 
had the shrewdness to take advantage of it ; and now, by Jove, 
you try to speak small of the bridge that carried you over. What 
did you do towards licking the Spaniards, eh ? And where would 
you be now, if they had not been licked in 1588, eh ? Not in 
Australia, my boy ! A Frenchman is conceited enough, but, by 
George, he can’t hold a candle to a Scotchman.” 

Tom spoke in a regular passion ; but there was some truth in 
what he said, I think. Burnside didn’t like it, and merely saying, 
“ You interrupt me, sir,” went on to his third volume without a 
struggle. 

“ You are aware, ladies, that there has been a gang of bush- 
rangers out to the north, headed by a miscreant, whom his com- 
panions call Touan, but whose real name is a mystery.” 

Mrs. Buckley said, “ Yes; ” and Tom glanced at Mary. She 
had grown as pale as death, and Tom said, “ Courage, cousin ; 
don’t be frightened at a name.” 

“ Well, sir,” continued Burnside, putting the forefinger and 
thumb of each hand together, as if he was making ‘‘windows” 
with soapsuds, “ Captain Desborough has surprised that gang in 
a gully, sir, and,” spreading his hands out right and left, “ob- 
literated them.” 

“ The devil ! ” said Tom, while the Doctor got up and stood 
beside Mary. 

“ Smashed them, sir,” continued Burnside ; “ extinguished them 
utterly. He had six of his picked troopers with him, and they 
came on them suddenly and brought them to bay. You see, two 
troopers have been murdered lately, and so our men, when they 
got face to face with the cowardly hounds, broke discipline, and 
wouldn’t be held. They hardly fired a shot, but drew their sabres, 
and cut the dogs down almost to a man. Three only out of twelve 
have been captured alive, and one of them is dying of a wound in 
the neck.” And, having finished, little Burnside folded his arms 
and stood in a military attitude, with the air of a man who had 
done the thing himself, and was prepared to receive his meed of 
praise with modesty. 

“ Courage, Mary,” said Tom ; “ don’t be frightened at shadows.” 
— He felt something sticking in his throat, but spoke out never- 
theless. 

“ And their redoubted captain,” he asked ; “ what has become 
of him ? ” 

“ What, Touan himself? ” said Burnside. “ Well, I am sorry 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


311 


to say that that chivalrous and high-minded gentleman was found 
neither among the dead nor the living. Not to mince matters, sir, 
he has escaped.” 

The Doctor saw Mary’s face quiver, but she bore up bravely, 
and listened. 

“ Escaped, has he ? ” said Tom. “ And do they know anything 
about him ? ” 

“ Desborough, who told me this himself,” said Burnside, “ says 
no, that he is utterly puzzled. He had made sure of the arch- 
rascal himself ; hut, with that remarkable faculty of saving his 
own skin which he has exhibited on more than one occasion, he 
has got off for the time, with one companion.” 

“ A companion ; eh ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Burnside, “ whereby hangs a hit of romance, if I 
may profane the word in speaking of such men. His companion is 
a young fellow, described as being more like a beautiful woman 
than a man, and bearing the most singular likeness in features to 
the great Captain Touan himself, who, as you have heard, is a 
handsome dog. In short, there is very little doubt that thev are 
father and son.” 

Tom thought to himself, “ Who on earth can this be ? What 
son can George Hawker have, and we not know of it?” He 
turned to Burnside. 

“ What age is the young man you speak of ? ” he asked. 

Twenty, or thereabouts, by all description,” said the other. 

Tom thought again : “ This gets very strange. He could have 
no son of that age got in Van Dieman’s Land : it was eight years 
before he was free. It must be some one we know of. He had 
some hyehlows in Devon, by all accounts. If this is one of them, 
how the deuce did he get here ? ” 

But he could not think. We shall see presently who it was. 
Now we must leave these good folks for a time, and just step over 
to Garoopna, and see how affairs go there. 


CHAPTER XXXHI. 

IN WHICH JAMES BRENTWOOD AND SAMUEL BUCKLEY, ESQUIRES, 
COMBINE TO DISTURB THE REST OF CAPTAIN BRENTWOOD, R.A., 
AND SUCCEED IN DOING SO. 

The morning after Cecil Mayford bad made his unlucky offer to 
Alice, he appeared at Sam’s bedside very early, as if he had come 


312 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


to draw Priam’s curtains ; and told him shortly, that he had 
spoken, and had been received with contempt ; that he was a 
miserable brute, and that he was going back home to attend to 
his business ; — under the circumstances, the best thing he could 
possibly do. 

So the field was clear for Sam, but he let matters stay as they 
were, being far too pleasant to disturb lightly ; being also, to tell 
the truth, a little uncertain of his ground, after poor Cecil had 
suffered so severely in the encounter. The next day, too, his 
father and mother went home, and he thought it would be only 
proper for him to go with them, but, on proposing it, Jim quietly 
told him he must stay where he was and work hard for another 
week, and Halbert, although a guest of the Buckleys, was con- 
strained to remain still at the Brentwoods’, in company with Sam. 

But at the end of a week they departed, and Jim went back 
with them, leaving poor Alice behind, alone with her father. 
Sam turned when they had gone a little way, and saw her white 
figure still in the porch, leaning in rather a melancholy attitude 
against the door-post. The audacious magpie had perched him- 
self on the top of her head, from which proud elevation he hurled 
wrath, scorn, and mortal defiance against them as they rode away. 
Sam took off his hat, and as he went on kept wondering whether 
she was thinking of him at all, and hoping that she might be 
sorry that he was gone. “ Probably, however,” he thought, “ she 
is only sorry for her brother.” 

They three stayed at Barooiia a week or more, one of them 
riding up every day to ask after Mary Hawker. Otherwise they 
spent their time shooting and fishing, and speculating how soon 
the rains would come, for it ’was now March, and autumn was 
fairly due. 

But at the end of this week, as the three were sitting together, 
one of those long-legged, slab-sided, lean, sunburnt, cabbage-tree- 
hatted lads, of whom Captain Brentwood kept always, say half-a- 
dozen, and the Major four or five (I should fancy, no relation to 
one another, and yet so exactly alike, that Captain Brentwood 
never called them % their right names by any chance) ; lads who 
were employed about the stable and the paddock, always in some 
way with the horses ; one of those representatives of the rising 
Australian generation, I say, looked in, and without announcing 
himself or touching his hat (an Australian never touches his hat if 
he is a free man, because the prisoners are forced to), came up to 
Jim across the drawing-room, as quiet and self-possessed as if he 
was quite used to good society, and, putting a letter in his hand, 
said merely, “ Miss Alice,” and relapsed into silence, amusing 


GEOFFRY HAIVILYN. 


313 


himself by looking round Mrs. Buckley’s drawing-room, the like of 
which he had never seen before. 

Sam envied Jim the receipt of that little three-cornered note. 
He wondered whether there was anything about him in it. Jim 
read it, and then folded it up again, and said “ Hallo ! ” 

The lad, — I always call that sort of individual a lad ; there is 
no other word for them, though they are of all ages, from sixteen 
to twenty, — the lad, I say, was so taken up with the contemplation 
of a blown-glass pressepapier on the table, that Jim had to say, 
“ Hallo there, John ! ” 

The lad turned round, and asked in a perfectly easy manner, 
“ What the deuce is this thing for, now? ” 

‘‘ That, ^ said Jim, “ is the button of a Chinese mandarin’s hat, 
who was killed at the battle of Waterloo in the United States by 
Major Buckley.” 

“ Is it now ? ” said the lad, quite contented. “ It’s yery pretty ; 
may I take it up ? ” 

“ Of course you may,” said Jim. “ Now, what’s the foal 
like ? ” 

“ Rather leggy, I should say,” he returned. “ Is there any 
answer ?” 

Jim wrote a few lines with a pencil on half his sister’s note, and 
gaye it him. He put it in the lining of his hat, and had got as 
far as the door, when he turned again. He looked wistfully 
towards the table where the pressepapier was lying. It was too 
muph for him. He came back and took it up again. What he 
wanted with it, or what he would have done with it if he had got 
it, I cannot conceive, but it had taken his simple fancy more, 
probably, than an emerald of the same size would have done. At 
last he put it to his eye. 

“Why, dam my cabbage-tree,” he said, “if you can’t see 
through it ! He wouldn’t seU it, I suppose, now? ” 

Jim pursed his lips and shook his head, as though to say that 
such an idea was not to be entertained, and the lad, with a sigh, 
laid it down and departed. Then Jim with a laugh threw his 
sister’s note over to Sam. I discovered this very same note only 
last week, while searching the Buckley papers for information 
about the family at this period. I have reason to believe that it 
has never been printed before, and, as far as I know, there is no 
other cojDy extant, so I proceed to give it in full. 

“What a dear, disagreeable old Jim you are,” it begins, “ to 
stay away there at Baroona, and me moping here with our 
daddy, who is calculating the explosiye power of shells under water 


314 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


at various temperatures. I have a good mind to learn the 
Differential Calculus myself, only on purpose to bore you with it 
when you come home.” 

“ By the bye, Corrella has got a foal. Such a dear little duck 
of a thing, with a soft bro’wn nose, and sweet long ears, like 
leaves ! Do come back and see it ; I am so very, very 
lonely ! ” 

“I hope Mr. Halbert is pretty well, and that his wound is 
getting quite right again. Don’t let him undertake cattle -drafting 
or anything violent. I wish you could bring him back with you, 
he is such a nice, agreeable creature.” 

“ Your magpie* has attacked cocky, and pulled a yeUow feather 
out of his crest, which he has planted in the flower-bed, either as 
a trophy, or to see if it will grow.” 

Now this letter is historically important, when taken in con- 
nexion with certain dates in my possession. It was written on 
a Monday, and Halbert, Jim, and Sam started back to Garoopna 
the next day, rather a memorable day for Sam, as you will see 
directly. Now I wish to call attention to the fact, that Sam, far 
from being invited, is never once mentioned in the whole letter. 
Therefore what does Miss Burke mean by her audacious calum- 
nies ? What does she mean by saying that Alice made love to 
Sam, and never gave the “ poor boy ” a chance of escape ? Can 
she, Lesbia, put her hand on her heart and say that she wasn’t 
dying to marry Sam herself, though she was (and is still, very 
likely) thirty years his senior ? The fact is, Lesbia gave herself 
the airs, and received the privileges of being the handsomest 
woman in those parts, till Alice came, and put her nose out of 
joint, for which she never forgave her. 

However, to return to this letter. I wonder now, as I am 
looking at the age-stained paper and faded writing, whether she 
who wrote it contemplated the possibility of its meeting Sam’s eye. 
I rather imagine that she did, from her provoking silence about 
him. At any rate, Jim was quite justified in showing him the 
letter, “ for you know,” he said, “ as there is nothing at aU about 
you in it, there can be no breach of confidence.” 

“ Well ! ” said Sam, when he had read it. 

“Well ! ” said Jim. “Let us all three ride over and look at 
the foal.” 

* Magpie, a large, pied crow. Of all the birds I have ever seen, the 
cleverest, the most grotesque, and the most musical. The splendid 
melody of his morning and evening song is as unequalled as it is 
in.d.escrihahl^. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


315 


So they went, and were strictly to be home at dinner-time ; 
whereas not one of them came home for a week. 

When they came to the door at Garoopna, there was Alice, most 
bewitchingly beautiful. Papa was away on the run, and Dr. 
Mulhaus with him ; so the three came in. Alice was very glad to 
see Halbert — was glad also to see Sam ; hut not so glad, or, at all 
events, did not say so much about it. 

“ Alice, have you seen the newspaper ? ” said Jim. 

“ No ; why ? ” 

“ There is a great steamer gone do^vn at sea, and three 
hundred persons drowned.”* 

“ What a horrible thing ! I should never have courage to cross 
the sea.” 

“ You would soon get accustomed to it, I think,” said Halbert. 

“I have never even seen it as yet,” she said, “save at a 
distance.” 

“ Strange, neither have I,” said Sam. “I have dim recollec- 
tions of our voyage here, hut I never stood upon the shore in my 
life.” 

“I have beat you there,” said Jim. “I have been down to 
Cape Chatham, and seen the great ocean itself : a very different 
thing from Sydney Harbour, I promise you. You see the great 
Cape running out a mile into the sea, and the southern rollers 
tumbling in over the reefs like cascades.” 

“ Let us go and see it ! — how far is it ? ” said Alice. 

“ About thirty miles. The Barkers’ station is about half a mile 
from the Cape, and we could sleep there, you know.” 

“ It strikes me as being a most brilliant idea,” said Sam. 

And so the arrangement was agreed to, and the afternoon went 
on pleasantly. Alice walked up and do^vn with Sam among the 
flowers, while Jim and Halbert lay beneath a mulberry tree and 
smoked. 

They talked on a subject which had engaged their attention 
a good deal lately. Jim’s whim for going soldiering had grown 
and struck root, and become a determination. He would go back 
to India when Halbert did, supposing that his father could be 
tempted to buy him a commission. Surely he might manage to 
join some regiment in India, he thought. India was the only 
place worth living in just nov/. 

“ I hope. Halbert,” he said, *Uhat the Governor will consent. 
I wouldn’t care when I went ; the sooner the better. I am tired 
of being a cattle-dealer on a large scale ; I want to get at some 
ma7i's work. If one thing were settled I would go to-morrow.” 

* Can this be the “President ” ? — H. K. 


316 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ And what is that ? ” said Halbert. 

Jim said nothing, but looked at the couple among the flower-beds. 

“Is that all ? ” said Halbert. “What will you bet me that 
that afiair is not concluded to-night? ” 

“ I’ll bet you five pounds to one it ain’t,” said Jim ; “ nor any 
time this twelvemonth. They’U go on shilly-shallying half their 
lives, I believe.” 

“ Nevertheless I’ll bet with you. Five to one it comes ofi* to- 
night ! Now ! There goes your sister into the house ; just go in 
after her.” 

Jim sauntered off, and Sam came and laid his great length 
down by the side of Halbert. 

They talked on different matters for a few minutes, till the 
latter said, — 

“ You are a lucky feUow, Sam.” 

“ With regard to what ? ” said Sam. 

“ With regard to Miss Brentwood, I mean.” 

“ What makes you think so ? ” 

“ Are you blind, Sam ? Can’t you see that she loves you better 
than any man in the world ? ” 

He answered nothing, but turaing his eyes upon Halbert, gazed 
at him a moment to see whether he was jesting or no. No, he 
was in earnest. So he looked down on the grass again, and, 
tearing little tufts up, said, — 

“ What earthly reason have you for thinking that ? ” 

“ What reason ! — fifty thousand reasons. Can you see no- 
thing in her eyes when she speaks to you, which is not there at 
other times ; hey, Bat? — I can, if you can’t.” 

“ If I could think so ! ” said Sam. “ If I could find out ! ” 

“When I want to find out anything, I generally ask,” said 
Halbert. 

Sam gave him the full particulars of Cecil’s defeat. 

“ All the better for you,” said Halbert; “depend upon it. I 
don’t Imow much about women, it is true, but I know more than 
you do.” 

“ I wish I knew as much as you do,” said Sam. 

“ And I wish I knew as little as you do,” said Halbert. 

Dinner-time came, but the Captain and the Doctor were not to 
the fore. After some speculations as to what had become of them, 
and having waited an hour, Jim said, that, in the unexplained 
absence of the crowned head, he felt it his duty to the country, 
to assume the reins of government, and order dinner. Prime 
Minister Alice, having entered a protest, offered no further oppo- 
sition, and dinner was brought in. 


GEOFFKY IIAMLYN. 


517 


Young folks don’t make so much of dinner as old ones at any 
time, and this dinner was an unusually dull one. Sam was silent 
and thoughtful, and talked little ; Alice, too, was not quite herself. 
Jim, as usual, ate like a hero, hut talked little ; so the conversa- 
tion was principally carried on hy Halbert, in the narrative style, 
who really made himself very useful and agreeable, and I am 
afraid they would have been a very “ slow ” party without him. 
Soon after the serious business of eating was over, Jim said, — 
“ Alice, I wonder what the Governor will say ? ” 

“ About what, brother ? ” 

“ About my going soldiering.” 

“ Save us ! What new crotchet is this ? ” 

“ Only that I’m going to bother the Governor till he gets me a 
commission in the army.” 

“ Are you really serious, Jim ? ” 

“ I never was more so in my life.” 

“So, Mr. Halbert,” said Alice, looking round at him, “you 
are only come to take my brother away from me ! ” 

‘ ‘ I assure you. Miss Brentwood, that I have only aided and 
abetted : the idea was his own.” 

“ Well, well, I see how it is ; — we were too happy, I suppose.” 
“But, Alice,” said Jim, “won’t you be proud to see your 
brother a good soldier ? ” 

“ Proud! I was always proud of you. But I wish the idea had 
never come into your head. If it was in war time I would say 
nothing, but now it is very different. Well, gentlemen, I shall 
leave you to your wine. Mr. Halbert, I like you very much, 
but I wish you hadn’t turned Jim’s head.” 

She left them, and walked down the garden ; through the twi- 
light among the vines, which were dropping their yellow leaves 
lightly on the turf before the breath of the autumn evening. So 
Jim was going, — going to be killed probably, or only coming back 
after ten years’ absence, “full of strange oaths and bearded like 
a pard.” She knew well how her father would jump at his first 
hint of being a soldier, and would move heaven and earth to 
get him a commission, — yes, he would go — her own darling, 
funny, handsome Jim, and she would be left all alone. 

No, not quite 1 There is a step on the path behind her that 
she knows ; there is an arm round her waist which was never 
there before, and yet she starts not as a low voice in her ear says, — 
“ Alice, my love, my darling, I have come after you to tell you 
that you are dearer to me than my life, and all the world besides. 
Can you love me half as well as I love you ? Alice, will you be 
my wife ? ” 


318 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


What answer ? Her hands pressed to her face, with a flood of 
happy tears, she only says, — 

“ Oh ! I’m so happy, Sam ! So glad, so glad ! ” 

“ Pipe up there, golden- voiced magpie ; give us one song more 
before you go to roost. Laugh out, old jackass, till you fetch an 
echo back from the foggy hollow. Up on your bare boughs, it is 
dripping, dreary autumn : but down here in the vineyard are 
bursting the first green buds of an immortal spring. 

There are some scenes which should only be undertaken by the 
hand of a master, and which, attempted by an apprentice like 
myself, would only end in disastrous failure, calling down the 
wrath of all honest men and true critics upon my devoted head, — 
not undeservedly. Three men in a century, or thereabouts, could 
write with sufficient delicacy and purity, to teU you what two 
such young lovers as Sam Buckley and Alice Brentwood said to 
one another in the garden that evening, walking up and do'wn 
between the yellow vines. I am not one of those three. Where 
Charles Dickens has failed, I may be excused from being diffident. 
I am an old bachelor, too — a further excuse. But no one ^can 
prevent my guessing, and I guess accordingly, — that they talked 
in a very low tone, and when, after an hour, Alice said it was 
time to come in, that Sam was quite astonished to find how little 
had been said, and what very long pauses there had been. 

They came in through the window into the sitting-room, and 
there was Doctor Mulhaus, Captain Brentwood, and also, of all 
people. Major Buckley, whom the other two had picked up in their 
ride and brought home. My information about this period of my 
histoiy is very full and complete. It has come to my knowledge 
on the best authority, that when Sam came forw'ard to the light. 
Halbert kicked Jim’s shins under the table, and whispered, 
“ You have lost your money, old fellow ! ” and that Jim answered. 
“ I wish it was ten pounds instead of five.” 

But old folks are astonishingly obtuse. Neither of the three 
seniors saw what had happened ; but entered con amove into the 
proposed expedition to Cape Chatham, and when bedtime came. 
Captain Brentwood, honest gentleman, went off to rest, and 
having said his prayers and wound up his watch, prepared for a 
comfortable night’s rest, as if nothing was the matter. 

He soon found his mistake. He had got his boots off, and was 
sitting pensively at his bedside, meditating further disrobements, 
when Jim entered mysteriously, and quietly announced that his 
whole life in future would be a weary burden if he didn’t get a 
commission in the army, or at least a cadetship in the East India 
Company’s service. Him the Captain settled by telling, that if 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


319 


he didn’t change his mind in a month he’d see about it, and so 
packed him off to bed. Secondly, as he was taking off his coat, 
wondering exceedingly at Jim’s communication, Sam appeared, 
and humbly and respectfully informed him that he had that day 
proposed to his daughter and been accepted,— provisionally ; 
hoping that the Captain would not disapprove of him as a son-in- 
law. He was also rapidly packed off to bed, by the assurance 
that he (Brentwood) had never felt so happy in his life, and had 
been sincerely hoping the young folks would fall in love with one 
another for a year past. 

So, Sam dismissed, the Captain got into bed ; but as soon as 
the light was blown out two native cats began grunting under the 
washing-stand, and he had to get out, and expel them in his 
shirt ; and finally he lost his temper and began swearing. Is a 
man never to get to sleep?” said he. “The devil must be 
abroad to-night, if ever he was in his life.” 

No sleep that night for Captain Brentwood. His son, asking 
for a commission in the army, and his daughter going to be 
married ! Both desirable enough in their way, but not the sort 
of facts to go to sleep over, particularly when fired off in his ear 
just as he was lying dow. So he lay tossing about, more or less 
uncomfortable all night, but dozed off just as the daylight began 
to show more decidedly in the window. He appeared to have 
slept from thirty to thirty-five seconds, when Jim woke him with, — 

“ It’s time to get up, father, if you are going to Cape Chatham 
to-day.” 

“D — n. Cape Chatham,” was his irreverent reply when Jim 
was gone, which sentiment has been often re-echoed by various 
coasting skippers in later times. “ Why, I haven’t been to sleep 
ten minutes, — and a frosty morning, too. I wish it would rain. 
I am not vindictive, but I do indeed. Can’t the young fools go 
alone, I wonder ? No ; hang it. I’ll make myself agreeable to- 
day, at all events ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

HOW THEY ALL WENT HUNTING FOR SEA ANEMONES AT CAPE 

CHATHAM ^AND HOW THE DOCTOR GOT A TERRIBLE FRIGHT 

AND HOW CAPTAIN BLOCKSTROP SHOWED THAT THERE WAS 
GOOD REASON FOR IT. 

And presently, the Captain, half dressed, working away at his 
hair with two very stiff brushes, betook himself to Major Buck- 


320 


THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 


ley’s room, whom he found shaving. “ I’ll wait till you’re done,” 
said he ; “I don’t want you to cut yourself.” 

And then he resumed : “ Buckley, your son wants to marry my 
daughter.” 

“ Shows his good taste,” said the Major. “ What do you 
think of it ? ” 

“ I am very much delighted,” said the Captain. 

‘‘ And what does she say to it ? ” 

“ She is very much delighted.” 

“And I am very much delighted, and I suppose Sam is too. 
So there we are, you see : all agreed.” 

And that was the way the marriage negotiations proceeded ; 
indeed, it was nearly all that was ever said on the subject. But 
one day the Major brought two papers over to the Captain 
(who signed them), which were supposed to refer to settlements, 
and after that all the arrangements were left to Alice and Mrs. 
Buckley. 

They started for Cape Chatham about nine o’clock in the day ; 
Halbert and Jim first, then Sam and Alice, and lastly the three 
elders. This arrangement did not last long, however ; for very soon 
Sam and Alice called aloud to Halbert and Jim to come and ride 
with them, for that they were boring one another to death. This 
they did, and now the discreet and sober conversation of the old- 
sters was much disturbed by the loud laughter of the younger folks, 
in which, however, they could not help joining. It was a glorious 
crystal clear day in autumn ; all nature, aroused from her 
summer’s rest, had put off her suit of hodden grey, and was 
flaunting in gaudiest green. The atmosphere was so amazingly 
pure, tliat miles away across the plains the travellers could dis- 
tinguish the herds of turkeys (bustards) stalking to and fro, while 
before them, that noble maritime mountain Cape Chatham towered 
up, sharply defined above the gleaming haze which marked the 
distant sea. 

For a time their way lay straight across the broad well-grassed 
plains, marked with ripples as though the retiring sea had but just 
left it. Then a green swamp ; through the tall reeds the native 
companion, king of cranes, waded majestic ; the brilliant porphyry 
water hen, with scarlet bill and legs, flashed like a sapphire 
among the emerald green water- sedge. A shallow lake, dotted 
with wild ducks, here and there a group of wild swan, black with 
red bills, floating calmly on its bosom. — A long stretch of grass as 
smooth as a bowling-green. — A sudden rocky rise, clothed with 
native cypress (Exocarpus. — Oh my botanical readers ! ”), honey- 
suckle (Banksia), she-oak (Casuarina), and here and there a 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


321 


stunted gum. Cape Chatham began to show grander and nearer, 
topping all ; and soon they saw the broad belt of brown sandy 
heath that lay along the shore. 

“ Here,” said the Doctor, riding up, “ we leave the last limit 
of the lava streams from Mimgish and the Organ-hill. Immedi- 
you shall see how we pass from the richly-grassed volcanic 
plains, into the barren sandstone heaths ; from a productive 
pasture land into a useless flower-garden. Nature here is 
economical, as she always is ; she makes her choicest ornamental 
efibrts on spots otherwise useless. You will see a greater variety of 
vegetation on one acre of your sandy heath than on two square miles 
of the thickly- grassed country we have been passing over.” 

It was as he said. They came soon on to the heath ; a dark 
dreary expanse, dull to look upon after so long a journey upon the 
bright green grass. It stretched away right and left intermin- 
ably, only broken here and there with islands of dull-coloured 
trees ; as melancholy a piece of country as one could conceive ; 
yet far more thickly peopled with animal, as well as vegetable life, 
than the rich pastoral downs further inland. Now they began to 
see the little red brush kangaroo, and the grey forester, skipping 
away in all directions ; and had it been summer they would have 
been startled more than once by the brown snake, and the copper 
snake, deadliest of their tribe. The painted quail and the brush 
quail (the largest of Australian game birds, I believe) whirred 
away from beneath their horses’ feet ; and the ground parrot, 
green, with mottlings of gold and black, rose like a partridge 
from the heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a 
“ White’s thrush,” close to an outlying belt of forest, and got 
into a great state of excitement about it. “ The only known 
bird,” he said, “which is found in Europe, America, and 
Australia alike.” Then he pointed out the emu -wren, a little 
tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers, flitting from bush 
to bush ; and then, leaving ornithology, he called their attention to 
the wonderful variety of low vegetation that they were riding 
through ; Hakeas, Acacias, Grevilleas, and what not. In spring 
this brown heath would have been a brilliant mass of flowers ; 
but now% nothing was to be seen save a few tall crimson spikes of 
Epacris, and here and there a bunch of lemon -coloured Correas. 
Altogether, he kept them so well amused, that they were 
astonished to come so quicldy upon the station, placed in a snug 
cove of the forest, where it bordered on the heath beside a slug- 
gish creek. Then, seeing the mountain towering up close to 
them, and hearing, as they stayed at the door, a low continuous 
thunder behind a high roll in the heath which lay before them, 

22 


322 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


they knew that the old ocean was close at hand, and that their 
journey was done. 

The people at the station were very glad to see them, of course. 
Barker, the paterfamilias, was an old friend of both the Major and 
the Captain, and they found so much to talk about, that after a 
heavy midday-meal, excellent in kind, though that kind was 
coarse, and certain libations of pale ale and cold claret and water, 
the older of the party, with the exception of Dr. Mulhaus, refused 
to go any farther ; so the young people started forth to the Cape, 
under the guidance of George Barker, the fourth or fifth son, who 
happened to be at home. 

“ Doctor,” said Alice, as they were starting, “ do you remark 
what beautiful smooth grass covers the Cape itself, while here we 
have nothing but this scrubby heath ? The mountain is, I 
suppose, some different formation ? ” 

“ Granite, my dear young lady,” said the Doctor. “ A cap of 
granite rising through and partly overlying this sandstone.” 

‘‘You can always tell one exactly what one wants to know,” 
said Alice ; and, as they walked forwards, somehow got talking to 
Halbert, which I believe most firmly had been arranged before- 
hand with Sam. For he, falling back, ranged alongside of the 
Doctor, and managing to draw him behind the others, turned to 
him and said suddenly, — 

“ My dear old friend ! my good old tutor ! ” 

The Doctor stopped short, pulled out a pair of spectacles, wiped 
them, put them on, and looked at Sam through them for nearly a 
minute, and then said : 

“ My dear boy, you don’t mean to say ” 

“ I do. Doctor. — Last night. — And, oh ! if you could only 
tell how happy I am at this moment ! If you could but guess at 
it! ” 

“ Pooh, pooh ! ” said the Doctor ; “ I am not so old as that, 
my dear boy. Why, I am a manying man myself. Sam, I am 
so very, very glad I you have won her, and now wear her, like a 
pearl beyond all price. I think that she is worthy of you : more 
than that she could not be.” 

They shook hands, and soon Sam was at her side again, toiling 
up the steep ascent. They soon distanced the others, and went 
forwards by themselves. 

There was such a rise in the ground seawards, that the broad 
ocean was invisible till they were half way up the grassy down. 
Then right and left they began to see the nether firmament, 
stretching away infinitely. But the happy lovers paused not till 
they stood upon the loftiest breezy knoll, and seemed alone 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


323 


together between the blue cloudless heaven and another azure- 
sphere which lay beneath their feet. 

A cloudless sky and a sailless sea. I''ar beneath them they 
heard but saw not the eternal surges gnawing at the mountain. A 
few white albatrosses skimmed and sailed below, and before, sea- 
ward, the sheets of turf, falling away, stretched into a shoreless 
headland, fringed with black rock and snow-white surf. 

She stood there flushed and excited with the exercise, her bright 
hair dishevelled, waving in the free sea-breeze, the most beautiful 
object in that glorious landscape, her noble mate beside her. 
Awe, wonder, and admiration kept both of them silent for a few 
moments, and then she spoke. 

“ Do you know any of the choruses in the ‘ Messiah ’ ? ” asked 
she. 

“ No, I do not,” said Sam. 

“I am rather sorry for it,” she said, “because this is so very 
like some of them.” 

“ I can quite imagine that,” said Sam. “ I can quite imagine 
music which expresses what we see now. Something infinitely 
broad I should say. Is that nonsense now ? ” 

“ Not to me,” said Alice. 

“ I imagined,” said Sam, “ that the sea would be much rougher 
than this. In spite of the ceaseless thunder below there, it is very 
calm.” 

“Calm, eh?” said the Doctor’s voice behind them. “God 
help the ship that should touch that reef this day, though a 
nautilus might float in safety ! See how the groundswell is 
tearing away at those rocks ; you can just distinguish the long 
heave of the water before it breaks. There is the most dangerous 
groundswell in the world off this coast. Should this country ever 
have a large coast-trade, they will find it out, in calm weather 
with no anchorage.” 

A great coasting trade has arisen ; and the Doctor’s remark has 
proved terribly true. Let the Monumental City and the Schom- 
berg, the Duncan Dunbar and the Catherine Adamson bear witness 
to it. Let the drowning cries of hundreds of good sailors, who 
have been missed and never more heard of, hear witness that this 
is the most pitiless and unprotected, and, even in calm weather, 
the most dangerous coast in the world. 

But Jim came panting up, and throwing himself on the ^hort 
turf, said — 

“ So this is the great Southern Ocean ; eh ! How far can one 
see, now. Halbert ? ” 

“ About thirty miles.” 


324 


THE KECOLLECTIONS- OF 


‘ ‘ And how far to India ; eh ? ” 

“ About seven thousand.” 

‘‘A long way,” said Jim. ‘‘However, not so far as to 
England.” 

“Fancy,” said Halbert, “one of those old Dutch voyagers 
driving on this unknown coast on a dark night. What a sudden 
end to their voyage I Yet. that must have happened to many 
ships which have never come home. Perhaps when they come to 
explore this coast a little more they may find some old ship’s ribs 
jammed on a reef ; the ribs of some ship whose name and memory 
has perished.” 

“ The very thing you mention is the case,” said the Doctor. 
“ Down the coast here, under a hopeless, black basaltic cliff, is to 
be seen the wreck of a very, very old ship, now covered with 
coral and seaweed. I waited down there for a spring tide, to 
examine her, but could determine nothing, save that she was very 
old ; whether Dutch or Spanish I know not.* You English 
should never sneer at those two nations ; they were before you 
everywhere.” 

“And the Chinese before any of us in Australia,” replied 
Halbert. 

“ If you will just come here,” said Alice, “where those black 
rocks are hid by the bend of the hill, you get only three colours in 
your landscape ; blue sky, grey grass, and purple sea. But look, 
there is a man standing on the promontory. He makes quite an 
eyesore there. I wish he would go away.” 

“ I suppose he has as good a right there as any of us,” answered 
the Doctor. “ But he certainly does not harmonise very well with 
the rest of the colouring. What a strange place he has chosen to 
stand in, looking out over the sea, as though he were a ship-wi’ecked 
mariner — the last of the crew.” 

“A shipwrecked mariner would hardly wear breeches and boots, 
my dear Doctor,” said Jim. “ That man is a stockman.” 

“Not one of ours, however,” said George Barker; “ even at 
this distance I can see that. See, he’s gone ! Strange ! I know 
of no way down the clifi* thereabouts. Would you like to come 
down to the shore ? ” 

So they began their descent to the shore by a winding path of 
turf, among tumbled heaps of granite ; down towards the rock- 
walled cove ; a horseshoe of smooth white sand lying between two 
long black reefs, among whose isolated pinnacles the gi'oundswell 
leapt and spouted ceaselessly. 

* Such a ship may be seen in the eastern end of Portland Bay, near 
the modern town of Port Fairy. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


325 


Halbert remarked, “ This granite coast is hardly so remarkable 
as our Cornish one. There are none of those queer pinnacles and 
tors one sees there, just ready to topple down into the sea. This 
gi-anite is not half so fantastic.” 

“Earthquakes, of which you have none in Cornwall,” said the 
Doctor, “ will just account for the difference. I have felt one near 
here quite as strong as your famous lieutenant, who capsized the 
Logan stone.” 

But now, getting on the level sands, they fell to gathering shells 
and sea-weeds like children. Jim, trying to see how near he could 
get to a wave without being caught, got washed up like jetsam. 
Alice took Sam’s pocket-handkerchief, and filled it indiscrimi- 
nately with flotsam, and everything she could lay her hand on, 
principally, however, lagend. Trochuses, as big as one’s fist, 
and “ Venus-ears,” scarlet outside. And after an hour, wet- 
footed and happy, dragging a yard or so of sea-tang behind her, 
she looked round for the Doctor, and saw him far out on the reef, 
lying flat on his stomach, and closely examining a large still pool 
of salt water, contained in the crevices of the rocks. 

He held up his hand and beckoned. Sam and Alice advanced 
towards him over the slippery beds of sea -weed, Sam bravely 
burjung his feet in the wet clefts, and holding out his hand to 
help her along. Once there was a break in the reef, too broad to 
be jumped, and then for the first time he had her fairly in his 
arms and swung her across, which was undoubtedly very delight- 
ful, but unfortunately soon over. At length, however, they reached 
the Doctor, who was seated like a cormorant on a wet rock, light- 
ing a pipe. 

“ What have you collected ? ” he asked. “ Show me.” 

Alice proudly displayed the inestimable treasures contained in 
Sam’s handkerchief. 

“ Rubbish ! Rubbish ! ” said the Doctor. “ Do you believe in 
mermaidens ? ” 

“ Of course I do, if you wish it,” said Alice. “ Have you seen 
one?” 

“ No, but here is one of their flower-gardens. Bend down and 
look into this pool.” 

She bent and looked. The first thing that she saw was her 
own exquisite face, and Sam’s brown phiz peering over her shoulder. 
A golden tress of hair, loosened by the sea breeze, fell down 
into the water, and had to be looped up again. Then gazing 
down once more, she saw beneath the crystal water a bed of 
flowers ; dahlias, ranunculuses, carnations, chrysanthemums, of 
every colour in the rainbow save blue. She gave a cry of 


326 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


pleasure : “ What are they, Doctor ? AVhat do you call 
them?” 

“ Sea anemones, in English, I believe,” said the Doctor, 
“ actinias, serpulas, and sabellas. You may see something like 
that on the European coasts, on a small scale, hut there is 
nothing I ever have seen like that great crimson fellow with 
cream-coloured tentacles. I do not know his name. I suspect 
he has never been described. The common European anemone 
they call ‘ crassicornis ’ is something like him, but not half as 
fine.” 

“ Is there any means of gathering and keeping them. Doctor? ” 
asked Sam. “ We have no flowers in the garden like them.” 

“No possible means,” said the Doctor. “ They are but lumps 
of jelly. Let us come away and get round the headland before 
the tide comes in.” 

They wandered on from cove to cove, under the dark cliffs, till 
rounding a little headland the Doctor called out, — 

“ Here is something in your Cornish style. Halbert.” 

A thin wall of granite, like a vast buttress, ran into the sea, 
pierced by a great arch, some sixty feet high. Aloft all sharp grey 
stone : below, wherever the salt water had reached, a mass of dark 
clinging weed : while beyond, as though set in a dark frame, was 
a soft glimpse of a blue sky and snow-white seabirds. 

“ There is nothing so grand as that in Cornwall, Doctor,” said 
Halbert. 

“ Can we pass under it, Mr. Barker? ” said Alice. “ I should 
like to go through ; we have been into none of the caves yet.” 

“ Oh, yes ! ” said George Barker. “ You may go through for 
the next two hours. The tide has not turned yet.” 

“ ITl volunteer first,” said the Doctor, “ and if there’s anything 
worth seeing beyond, I’U come for you.” 

It was, as I said, a thin wall of granite, which ran out from the 
rest of the hiU, seaward, and was pierced by a tall arch ; the blocks 
which had formerly filled the void now lay, weed-gro\vn, half buried 
in sand, forming a slippery threshold. Over these the Doctor 
climbed and looked beyond. 

A little sandy cove, reef-bound, like those they had seen before, 
lay under the dark cliffs ; and on a water-washed rock, not a 
hundred yards from him, stood the man they had seen on the 
downs above, looking steadily seaward. 

The Doctor slipped over the rocks like an otter, and approached 
the man across the smooth sand, unheard in the thunder of the 
surf. When he was close upon him, the stranger turned, and the 
Doctor uttered a low cry of wonder and alarm. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


327 


It was George Hawker ! The Doctor knew him in a moment : 
hut whether the recognition was mutual, he never found out, for 
Hawker, stepping rapidly from stone to stone, disappeared round 
the headland, and the thunderstruck Doctor retraced his steps to 
the arch. 

There were all the young people gathered, wondering and de- 
lighted. But Alice came to meet him, and said, — 

“ Who was that with you just now ? ” 

“ A mermaid ! ” replied he. 

“ That, indeed ! ” said Alice. “ And what did she 
say ? ” 

“She said, ‘Go home to your supper; you have seen quite 
enough ; go home in good time.’ ” 

“ Doctor, there is something wi’ong ! ” said Alice. “ I see it 
in your face. Can 3^ou trust me, and tell me what it is ? ” 

“ I can trust you so far as to tell you that you are right. I 
don’t like the look of things at all. I fear there are evil times 
coming for some of our friends ! I''urther than this I can say 
nothing. Say your prayers, and trust God ! Don’t tell Sam 
anything about this : to-morrow I shall speak to him. We won’t 
spoil a pleasant holiday on mere suspicion.” 

They rejoined the others, and the Doctor said, “ Come away 
home now ; we have seen enough. Some future time we will 
come here again : you might see this fifty times, and never get 
tired of it.” 

After a good scramble they stood once more on the down above, 
and turned to take a last look at the broad blue sea before they 
descended inland ; at the first glance seaward. Halbert exclaimed, — 

“ See there. Doctor ! see there ! A boat ! ” 

“ It’s only a whale, I think,” said George Barker. 

There was a black speck far out at sea, hut no whale ; it was 
too steady for that. All day the air had been calm ; if anything, 
the breeze was from the north, but now a strong wind was coming 
up from the south-east, freshening every moment, and bringing 
with it a pent hank of dark clouds ; and, as they watched, the 
mysterious black speck was topped with white, and soon they saw 
that it was indeed a boat driving before the wind under a spritsail, 
which had just been set. 

“ That is very strange ! ” said George Barker. “ Can it be a 
shipwrecked party? ” 

“ More likely a mob of escaped convicts from Van Dieman’s 
Land,” said Jim. “ If so, look out for squalls, you George, and 
keep your guns loaded.” 

“ I don’t think it can be that, Jim,” said Sam. “ What could 


328 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


bring them so far north ? They would have landed, more likely, 
somewhere in the Straits, about the big lakes.” 

“ They may have been driven off shore by these westerly winds 
which have been blowing the last few days,” replied Jim, “ and 
kept their boat’s head northward, to get nearer the settlements. 
They will be terribly hungry when they do land, for certain. 
What’s your opinion. Doctor? ” 

“ I think that wise men should be always prepared. We should 
communicate with Captain Desborough, and set the police on the 
alert.” 

“ I wonder,” said Sam, “ if that mysterious man we saw to-day, 
watching on the cliff, could have had any connexion with this 
equally mysterious boat. Not likely, though. How'ever, if they 
are going to land to-night, they had better look sharp, for it is 
coming on to blow.” 

The great bank of cloud which they had been watching, away to 
the south-east, was growing and spreading rapidly, sending out 
little black avant-couriers of scud, which were hurrying fanlike 
across the heavens, telling the news of the coming storm. Land- 
ward, in the west, the sun was going down in pui’ple and scarlet 
splendour, but seaward, all looked dark and ominous. 

The young folios stood together in the verandah before they went 
in to dinner, listening to the wind which was beginning to scream 
angrily round the corners of the house. The rain had not j^et 
gathered strength to fall steadily, but was whisked hither and 
thither by the blast, in a few uncertain drops. They saw that a 
great gale was coming up, and knew that, in a few hours, earth 
and sky would be mingled in furious war. 

“ How comfortable it is to think that all the animals are under 
shelter to-night ! ” said Sam. “ Jim, my boy, I am glad you and 
I are not camped out with cattle this evening. We have been out 
on nights as bad as this though ; eh ? Oh, Lord ! fancy sitting 
the saddle all to-night, under the breaking boughs, wet through ! ’ ’ 

“ No more of that for me, old Sam. No more jolly gallops 
after cattle or horses for me. But I was always a good hand at 
anything of that sort, and I mean to be a good soldier now. You’ll 
see.” 

At dark, while they were sitting at dinner, the storm was raging 
round the house in full fury ; but there, in the well-lighted room, 
before a good fire, they cared little for it. When dinner was over, 
the Doctor called the Captain and the Major aside, and told them 
in what manner he had seen and recognised George Hawker on 
the beach that day ; and raised their fears still more by telling 
them of that mysterious boat which the Doctor thought Hawker 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


329 


had been watching for. None of them could understand it, hut 
all agreed that these things boded no good ; and so, having called 
their host into their conRdence, with regard to the boat, they 
quietly loaded all the fire-arms in the place, and j)ut them to- 
gether in the hall. This done, they returned to the sitting-room, 
and, having taken their grog, retired to bed. 

It must be remembered that hitherto Major Buckley knew 
nothing of George Hawker’s previous appearance, but the Doctor 
now let him into the secret. The Major’s astonishment and wrath 
may be conceived, at finding that his old protegee Mary, instead 
of being a comfortable widow, was the persecuted wife of one of 
the greatest bushrangers known. At first he was stunned and 
confused, but, ere he slept, his clear straightforward mind had 
come to a determination that the first evil was the worst, and that, 
God give him grace, he would hand the scoundrel over to justice 
on the first opportunity, sure that he was serving Mary best by 
doing so. 

That night Jim and Sam lay together in a little room to the 
windward of the house. They were soon fast asleep, but, in the 
middle of the night, Jim was awoke by a shake on the shoulder, 
and, rousing himself, saw that Sam was sitting up in the bed. 

“ My God, Jim ! ” said he, — “ I have had such an awful 
dream ! I dreamed that those fellows in the boat were carrrying 
olf Alice, and I stood by and saw it, and could not move hand or 
foot. I am terribly frightened. That was something more than 
a dream, Jim.” 

“ You ate too much of that pie at dinner,” said Jim, “ and 
you’ve had the nightmare, — that is what is the matter with you. 
Lord bless you, I often have the nightmare when I have eaten 
too much at supper, and lie on my back. Why, I dreamed the 
other night that the devil had got me under the wool-press, 
screwing me down as hard as he could, and singing the Hun- 
dredth Psalm aU the time. That was a much worse dream than 
yours.” 

Sam was obliged to confess that it was. “But still,” said he, “I 
think mine was something more than a dream. I’m frightened 
still.” 

“Oh, nonsense ; lie down again. You are pulling all the clothes 
off me.” 

They lay down, and Jim was soon asleep, but not so Sam. His 
dream had taken such hold of his imagination, that he lay awake, 
listening to the storm howling around the house. Now and then 
he could hear the unearthly scream of some curlew piercing the 
din, and, above all, he could hear the continuous earth-shaking 


330 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


thunder of the surf upon the beach. Soon after daylight, getting 
Halbert to accompany him, he went out to have a look at the shore, 
and, forcing their way against the driving, cutting rain, they looked 
over the low cliff at the furious waste of waters beneath them, and 
saw mountain after mountain of water hurl itself, in a cloud of 
spray, upon the shore. 

“ What terrible waves, now ! ” said Sam. 

“ Yes,” replied Halbert ; “ there’s no land to windward for six 
thousand miles or more. I never saw heavier seas than those. I 
enjoy this, Sam. -It reminds me of a good roaring winter’s day in 
old Cornwall.” 

“ I like it, too,” said Sam. “ It freshens you up. How calm 
the water is to the leeward of the Cape ! ” 

“Yes; a capital harbour of refuge that. Let us go home to 
breakfast.” 

He turned to go, but was recalled by a wild shout from Sam. 

“ A ship ! A ship ! ” 

He ran back and looked over into the seething hell of waters 
below. Was it only a thicker spot in the driving mist, or was it 
really a ship ? If so, God help her. 

Small time to deliberate. Ere he could think twice about it, a 
full-rigged ship, about five-hundred tons, with a close-reefed top- 
sail, and a rag of a foresail upon her, came rushing, rolling, 
diving, and plunging on, apparently heading for the deadly white 
line of breakers which stretched into the sea at the end of the 
promontory. 

“A Queen’s ship, Sam! a Queen’s ship! The Tartar, for a 
thousand pounds ! Oh, what a pity ; what a terrible pity ! ” 

“ Only a merchant ship, surely,” said Sam. 

“ Did you ever see a merchant ship with six such guns as those 
on her upper deck, and a hundred blue-jackets at quarters ? 
That is the Tartar, Sam, and in three minutes there will be no 
Tartar.” 

They had run in their excitement out to the very end of the 
Cape, and now the ship was almost under their feet, an awful sight 
to see. She was rolling fearfully, going dead before the wind. 
Now and then she would slop tons of water on her deck, and her 
mainyard would almost touch the water. But still the dark clusters 
of men along her bulwarks held steadfast, and the ship’s head 
never veered half a point. Now it became apparent that she would 
clear the reef by a hundred yards or more, and Halbert, waving 
his hat, cried out, — 

“ Well done, Blockstrop ! Bravely done, indeed ! He is 
running under the lee of the Cape for shelter. Her Majesty 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


331 


has one more ship-of-war than I thought she would have had, five 
minutes ago.” 

As he spoke, she had passed the reef. The yards, as if by 
magic, swung round, and, for a moment, she was broadside on to 
the sea. One wave broke over her, and nought but her masts 
appeared above a sheet of white foam ; but, ere the water had 
well done pouring from her open deck ports, she was in smooth 
water, her anchor was down, and the topsail yard was black with 
men. 

“ Let us come down, Sam,” said Halbert : “ very likely they 
will send a boat ashore.” 

As they were scrambling down the leeward side of the cliff, they 
saw a boat put off from the ship, and gained the beach in time 
to meet a midshipman coming towards them. He, seeing two 
well-dressed gentlemen before him, bowed, and said, — 

“ Good morning ; very rough weather.” 

“Very, indeed,” said Halbert. “Is that the Tartar, 
pray ? ” 

“ That is the Tartar ; yes. We were caught in the gale last 
night, and we lay- to. This morning, as soon as we recognised 
the Cape, we determined to run for this cove, where we have been 
before. We had an anxious night last night, I assure you. We 
have been terribly lucky. If the wind had veered a few more 
points to the east, we should have been done for. We never could 
have beaten off' in such a sea as this.” 

“ Are you going to Sydney ? ” 

“ No ; we are in chase of a boat full of escaped convicts from 
Launceston. Cunning dogs ; they would not land in the Straits. 
We missed them and got across to Port Phillip, and put Captain 

D and his black police on the alert ; and the convicts have got 

a scent of it, and coasted up north. We have examined the coast 
all along, but I am afraid they have given us the slip ; there is 
such a system of intelligence among them. However, if they had 
not landed before last night, they have saved us all trouble ; and 
if they are ashore we wash our hands of them, and leave them to 
the police.” 

Halbert and Sam looked at one another. Then the former 
said, — 

“ Last night, about an hour before it came on to blow, we saw a 
boat making for this very headland, which puzzled us exceedingly ; 
and, what was stranger still, we saw a man on the Cape, who 
seemed to be on the look-out.” 

“That is quite possible,” replied the midshipman; “these 
fellows have a queer system of communication. The boat you saw 


332 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


must certainly have been them ; and if they landed at all they 
must have landed here.” 

-Sf -JJ- * 

I must change the scene here, if you please, my dear reader, 
and get you to come with me on board his (I beg pardon, her) 
Majesty’s ship Tartar, for a few minutes, for on the quarter-deck of 
that noble sloop there are at this moment two men worth rescuing 
from oblivion. 

The first is a stoutish, upright, middle-aged man, in a naval 
uniform, with a brickdust complexion, and very light scanty 
whiskers : the jolliest, cheeriest-looking fellow you are likely to 
meet in a year’s journey. Such a bright merry blue eye as he 
has, too ! This is Captain Blockstrop, now, I am happy to say, 
C.B. ; a right valiant officer, as the despatches of Lyons and Peel 
will testify. 

The other is a very different sort of man ; — a long, wiry, brown- 
faced man, with a big forehead, and a comical expression about his 
eyes. This is no less a person than the Colonial Secretary of one 
of our three great colonies : of which I decline to mention. Those 
who know the Honourable Abirani Pollifex do not need to be told ; 
and those who do not must find out for themselves. I may mention 
that he has been kno^vn to retain office seven years in succession, 
and yet he seldom threatens to resign his office and throw himself 
upon the country fewer than three times, and sometimes four, per 
annum. Latterly, I am sorry to say, a miserable faction, taking 
advantage of one of his numerous resignations, have assumed the 
reins ‘of government, and in spite of three votes of want of con- 
fidence, persist in retaining the seals of office. Let me add to this, 
that he is considered the best hand at quiet “chafi‘” in the House, 
and is allowed, both by his supporters and opponents, to be an 
honourable man, and a right good fellow. 

Such were the two men who now stood side by side on the 
quarterdeck, looking eagerly at Sam and Halbert through a pair 
of telescopes. 

“ Pollifex,” said the Captain, “ what do you make of these ? ” 

“ Gentlemen,” said the Secretary, curtly. 

“ So I make out,” said the Captain : “ and apparently in good 
condition, too. A very well fed man that biggest, I should say.” 

“ Ye-es ; well, ye-es,” said the Secretary ; “he does look well- 
fed enough. He must be a stranger to these parts ; probably from 
the Maneroo plains, or thereabout.” 

“ What makes you think so ? ” 

“Dear me,” said the Secretary; “have you been stationed 
* “ Maneroo ” is always pronounced “ Maneera.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


333 


nearly three years on this coast, and ask how a man could possibly 
be in good condition living in those scrubby heaths ? ” 

“ Bad-looking country ; eh ? ” said the Captain. 

. “ Small cattle-stations, sir,” said the Secretary, “ I can see at 
a glance. Salt beef, very tough, and very little of it. I shall run 
a bill through the House for the abolition of small cattle-stations 
next session.” 

Better get your estimates through first, old fellow. The 
bagpipes will play quite loud enough over them to last for some 
time.” 

“ I know it, but tremble not,” replied the undaunted Secretary ; 
“ I have got used to it. I fancy I hear Callaghan beginning now : 
‘ The unbridled prodigality, sir, and the reckless profligacy, sir, 
of those individuals who have so long, under the name of govern- 
ment ’ ” 

“ That’ll do, now,” said the Captain ; “ you are worse than the 
reality. I shall go ashore, and take my chance of getting break- 
fast. Will you come ? ” 

“Not if I know it, sir, with pork chops for breakfast in the 
cabin. Blockstrop, have you duly reflected what you are about to 
do ? You are about to land alone, unarmed, unprovisioned, among 
the offscourings of white society, scarcely superior in their habits 
of life to the nomadic savages they have unjustly displaced. Pause 
and reflect, my dear fellow. What guarantee have you that they 
will not propose to feed you on damper, or some other nameless 
abomination of the same sort ? ” 

“It was only the other day in the House,” said the Captain, 
“ that you said the small squatters and freehold farmers repre- 
sented the greater part of the intelligence and education of the 
colony, and now ” 

“Sir! sir!” said the Secretary, “you don’t know what you 
are talking about. Sir, we are not in the House now. Are you 
determined, then ? ” 

The Captain was quite detennined, and they went down to the 
waist. They were raising a bag of potatoes from somewhere, and 
the Colonial* Secretary, seizing two handfuls of them, presented 
them to the Captain. 

“ If you will go,” he said, “ take these with you, and teach the 
poor benighted white savages to plant them. So if you fall a 
victim to indigestion, we will vote a monument to you on the 
summit of the Cape, and write : — ‘ He did not live in vain. He 
introduced the potato among the small cattle-stations around 
Cape Chatham.’ ” 

He held out his potatoes towards the retiring Captain with the 


334 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


air of Burke producing the dagger. His humour, I perceive, 
reads poor enough when written down, hut when assisted by his 
comical impassible face, and solemn drawling delivery, I never 
heard anything much better. 

Good old Pollifex ! my heart warms towards him now. When 
I think what the men were whose clamoui* put him out of office in 
184 — , I have the conviction forced upon me, that the best among 
them was not worth his little finger. He left the colony in a 
most prosperous state, and, retiring honourably to one of his 
stations, set to work, as he said, to begin life again on a new 
principle. He is wealthy, honoured, and happy, as he deserves 
to be. 

I cannot help, although somewhat in the wong place, telling 
the reader under what circumstances I saw him last. Only two 
years ago, fifteen after he had left office, I happened to be 
standing with him, at the door of a certain club, in a certain 
capital, just after lunch time, when we saw the then Colonial 
Secretary, the man who had succeeded Pollifex, come scurrying 
round the corner of the street, fresh from his office. His face 
was flushed and perspiring, his hat was on wrong- side before, 
with his veil hanging down his back. In the one hand he held 
papers, in the other he supported over his fevered brow his white 
cotton umbrella ; altogether he looked harassed beyond the 
bounds of human endurance, but when he caught sight of the 
open club-doors, he freshened a bit, and mended his pace. His 
troubles were not over, for ere he reached his haven, two Irish- 
men, with two different requests, rose as if from the earth, and 
confronted him. We saw him make two promises, contradictory 
to each other, and impossible of fulfilment, and as he came up the 
steps, I looked into the face of Ex- Secretary Pollifex, and saw 
there an expression which is beyond description. Say that of 
the ghost of a man who has been hanged, attending an execution. 
Or say the expression of a Catholic, converted by torture, watching 
the action of the thumb -screws upon another heretic. The air, in 
short, of a man who had been through it all before. And as the 
then Secretary came madly rushing up the steps, Pollifex con- 
fronted him, and said, — 

“Don’t you wish you were me, T ? ” 

“Sir!” said the Secretary, “dipping” his umbrella and 
dropping his papers, for the purpose of rhetorically pointing with 
his left hand at nothing; “Sir! flesh and blood can’t stand it. 
I resign to-morrow.” And so he went in to his lunch, and is in 
office at this present moment. 

I must apologise most heartily for this long digression. The 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


335 


Captain s gig, impelled by the “ might of England’s pride,” was 
cleverly beached alongside of the other boat, and the Captain 
stepped out and confronted the midshipman. 

“ Got any news, Mr. Vang ? ” 

“ Yes, sir, said the midshipman. “ These gentlemen saw 
the boat yesterday afternoon.” 

Sam and Halbert, who were standing behind him, came 
forward. The Captain bowed, and looked with admiration at the 
two highbred-looking men, that this unpromising desert had pro- 
duced. They told him what they had told the midshipman, and 
the Captain said, — “ It will be a very serious thing for this 
country side, if these dogs have succeeded in landing. Let us 
hope that the sea has done good service in swallowing fourteen of 
the vilest wretches that ever disgraced humanity. Pray, are 
either of you gentlemen magistrates? ” 

“My father. Major Buckley, is a magistrate,” said Sam. 
“ This gentleman is Lieutenant Halbert, of the Bengal Artillery.” 

The Captain bowed to Halbert, and turning to Sam, said, — 
“ So you are the son of my old friend Major Buckley ! I was 
midshipman in the ‘ Phelgethon ’ when she took him and part of 
his regiment to Portugal, in 1811. I met him at dinner in 
Sydney, the other day. Is he in the neighbourhood?” 

“He is waiting breakfast for us not a quarter of a mile off,” 
said Sam. “ Will you join us ? ” 

“ I shall be delighted ; but duty first. If these fellows have 
succeeded in landing, you will have to arm and prepare for the 
worst. Now, unless they were caught by the gale and drowned, 
which I believe to be the case, they must have come ashore in 
this very bay, about five o’clock last night. There is no other 
place where they could have beached their boat for many miles. 
Consequently, the thing lies in a nutshell : if we find the boat, 
prepare yourselves, — if not, make yourselves easy. Let us use our 
wits a little. They would round the headland as soon as possible, 
and probably run ashore in that furthest cove to our right, just 
inside the reef. I have examined the bay through a telescope, 
and could make out nothing of her. Let us come and examine 
carefully. Downhaul ! ” (to his Coxswain). “Come with me.” 

They passed three or four indentations in the bay, examining as 
they went, finding nothing, but when they scrambled over the 
rocks which bounded the cove the Captain had indicated, he 
waved his hat, and laughing, said, — 

“ Ha, ha ! just as I thought. There she is.” 

“Where, Captain Blockstrop?” said Halbert. “I don’t see 
her.” 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


m 


“Nor I either,” said the Captain. “But I see the heap of 
seeweed that the cunning dogs have raked over her. Downhaul ; 
heave away at this weed, and show these gentlemen what is 
below it.” 

The Cockswain began throwing away a pile of sea-tang heaped 
against a rock. Bit by hit was disclosed the clear run of a 
beautiful white whale boat, which when turned over discovered 
her oars laid neatly side by side, with a small spritsail. The 
Captain stood by with the air of a man who had made a hit, while 
Sam and Halbert stared at one another with looks of blank dis- 
comfiture and alarm. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

A COUNCIL OF WAR. 

This is a very serious matter for us. Captain Blockstrop,” said 
Sam, as they were walking back to the boats. “ An exceedingly 
serious matter.” 

“ I have only one advice to give you, Mr. Buckley,” said the 
Captain ; “ which is unnecessary, as it is just what your father 
will do. Fight, sir ! — hunt ’em do-wn. Shoot ’em ! they will 
give you no quarter : be sure you don’t give them any.” 

A wild discordant bellow was here heard from the ship, on 
which the Captain slapped his leg and said, — 

“Dash my buttons, if he hasn’t got hold of my speaking- 
trumpet.” 

The midshipman came up with a solemn face, and, touching his 
cap, “ reported,” — 

“ Colonial Secretary hailing, sir.” 

“ Bless my soul, Mr. Vang, I can hear that,” said the Captain. 
“ I don’t suppose any of my officers would dare to make such an 
inarticulate, no sailor-like bellow as that on her Majesty’s quarter- 
dsck. Can you make out what he says? That would be more 
to the purpose.” 

Again the unearthly bellow came floating over the water, 
happily deadened by the wind, which was roaring a thousand 
feet over head. 

“ Cnn you make out anything, Mr. Vang ? ” said the Captain. 

“ I make out ‘ pork chops ! ’ sir,” said the midshipman. 

“ Take one of the boats on board, Mr. Vang. My compliments. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


337 


and will be much obliged if he will come ashore immediately ! on 
important business, say. Tell him the convicts have landed, will 
you ? Also, tell the lieutenant of the watch that I want either 
Mr. Tacks, or Mr. Sheets : either will do.” 

The boat was soon seen coming back with the Colonial 
Secretary in a statesmanlike, attitude in the stern sheets, and 
beside him that important officer Mr. Tacks, a wee little dot of 
a naval cadet, apparently about ten years old. 

“ What were you bellowing about pork-chops, Pollifex ? ” asked 
the Captain, the moment the boat touched the shore. 

“ A failure, sir,” said the Colonial Secretary ; “ burnt, sir ; dis- 
gracefully burnt up to a cinder, sir. I have been consulting the 
honourable member of the Cross -jack-yard (I allude to Mr. Tacks, 
N.C., my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so) as 
to the propriety of calling a court-martial on the cook’s mate. 
He informs me that such a course is not usual in naval juris- 
prudence. I am, however, of opinion that in one of the civil 
courts of the colony an action for damages would lie. Surely 
I have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Buckley of Baroona ? ” 

Sam and he had met before, and the Secretary, finding himself 
on shore, and where he was known, dropped his King Cambyses’ 
vein and appeared in his real character of a shrew'd, experienced 
man. They walked up together, and when they arrived at the 
summit of the ridge, and saw the magnificent plains stretching 
away inland, beyond the narrow belt of heath along the shore, the 
Secretary whispered to the Captain, — 

“ I have been deceived. We shall get some breakfast, after 
all. As fine a country as I ever saw in my life ! ” 

The party who were just sitting down to breakfast at the station 
were sufficiently astonished to see Captain Blockstrop come rolling 
up the garden walk, with that small ship-of-war Tacks sailing in 
his wake, convoying the three civilians ; but on going in and ex- 
plaining matters, and room having been made for them at the 
table, Sam was also astonished on looking round to see that a new 
arrival had taken place that morning. 

It was that of a handsome singular-looking man. His hair was 
light, his whiskers a little darker, and his blonde moustache curled 
up towards his eyes like corkscrews or ram’s horns (congratulate 
me on my simile). A very merry laughing eye he had, too, blue 
of course, with that coloured hair ; altogether a very pleasant- 
looking man, and yet whose face gave one the idea that it was not 
at all times pleasant, but on occasions might look terribly tigerish 
and fierce. A man who won you at once, and yet one with whom 
one would hardly like to quarrel. Add to this, also, that when he 

23 




338 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


opened his mouth to speak, he disclosed a splendid set of white 
teeth, and the moment he’d uttered a word, a stranger would 
remark to himself, “ That is an Irishman.” 

Sam, who had ensconced himself beside Alice, looked up the 
long table towards him with astonishment. “Why, good gracious. 
Captain Desborough,” he said, “ can that be you ? ” 

“I have been waiting,” said Desborough, “with the greatest 
patience, to see how long you would have the audacity to ignore 
my presence. How do you do, my small child ? Sam, my dear, 
if ever I get cashiered for being too handsome to remain in the 
Service, I’U carry you about and exhibit you, as the biggest and 
ugliest boy in the Australian colonies.” 

Captain Desborough has been mentioned before in these pages. . 
He was an officer in the army, at the present time holding the 
situation of Inspector of Police in this district. He was a very 
famous hunter-down of bushrangers, and was heartily popular with 
every one he was thrown against, except the aforesaid bushrangers. 
Sam and he were veiy old friends, and were veiy fond of one 
another. 

Desborough was sitting now at the upper end of the table, with 
the Colonial Secretary, Major Buckley, Captain Blockstrop, Cap- 
tain Brentwood, and Doctor Mulhaus. They looked very serious 
indeed. 

“ It was a very lucky thing, Desborough,” said the Major, 
“ that you happened to meet Captain Blockstrop. He has now, 
you perceive, handed over the care of these rascals to you. It is 
rather strange that they should have landed here.” 

“I believe that they were expected,” said the Doctor. “I 
believe that there is a desperate scheme of viUainy afloat, and that 
some of us are the objects of it.” 

“ If you mean,” said Desborough, “ that that man you saw on 
the Cape last night was watching for the boat, I don’t believe it 
possible. It was, possibly, some stockman or shepherd, having a 
look at the weather.” 

The Doctor had it on the tip of his tongue to speak, and astound 
them by disclosing that the lonely watcher was none other than 
the ruffian Touan, alias George Hawker ; but the Major pressed 
his foot beneath the table, and he was silent. 

“Well,” said Desborough, “ and that’s about all that’s to be 
said at present, except that the settlers must arm and watch, and 
if necessary fight.” 

“If they will only do that,” said the Colonial Secretary ; “if 
they will only act boldly in protecting their property and lives, the 
evil is reduced by one-half ; but when Brallagan was out, nothing 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


339 


that I or the Governor could do would induce the majority of them 
to behave like men.” 

“ Look here, now,” said Barker, the host, “ I was over the 
water when Brallagan was out, and when Howe was out too. 
And what could a lonely squatter do against half-a-dozen of ’em ? 
Answer me that ? ” 

I don’t mean that,” said the Colonial Secretary; “what I 
refer to is the cowardly way in which the settlers allowed them- 
selves to be prevented by threats from giving information. I speak 
the more boldly, Mr. Barker, because you were not one of those 
who did so.” 

Barker was appeased. “ There’s five long guns in my hall, 
and there’s five long lads can use ’em,” he said. “ By-the-bye, 
Captain Desborough, let me congratulate you on the short work 
you made with that gang to the north, the other day. I am sorry 
to hear that the principal rascal of the lot. Captain Touan, gave 
you the slip.” 

The Doctor had been pondering, and had made up his mind to 
a certain course ; he bent over the table, and said — 

“ I think, on the whole, that it is better to let you all know the 
worst. That man whom we saw on the cliff last night I met after- 
wards, alone, down on the shore, and that man is no other than 
the one you speak of. Captain Touan.” 

Any one watching Desborough ’s face as the Doctor spoke would 
have seen his eyebrows contract heavily, and a fierce scowl settle 
on his face. The name the Doctor mentioned was a very unwel- 
come one. He had been taunted and laughed at, at Government- 
house, for having allowed Hawker to outwit him. His hot Irish 
blood couldn’t stand that, and he had vowed to have the fellow 
somehow. Here he had missed him, again, and by so little, too. 
He renewed his vow to himself, and in an instant the cloud was 
gone, and the merry Irishman was there again. 

“ My dear Doctor,” he said, “ I am aware that you never speak 
at random, or I should ask you, were you sure of the man ? Are 
you not mistaken ? ” 

“ Mistaken in him , — eh ? ” said the Doctor. “ No, I was not 
mistaken.” 

“ You seem to know too much of a very suspicious character. 
Doctor ! ” said Desborough. “I shall have to keep my eye on 
you, I see I ” 

•5:- * -K- * * * 

Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, more agreeable sub- 
jects were being talked of. There sat our young coterie, laughing 
loudly, grouping themselves round some exceedingly minute object, 


340 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OP 


whicli apparently was between Sam and Alice, and which, on close 
examination, turned out to be little Tacks, who was evidently 
making himself agreeable in a way hardly to be expected in one 
of his tender years. And this is the way he got there : — 

When Captain Blockstrop came in, Alice was duly impressed by 
the appearance of that warrior. But when she saw little Tacks 
slip in behind him, and sit meekly do^vn by the door ; and when 
she saw how his character was appreciated by the cattle-dogs, 
one of whom had his head in the lad’s lap, while the other was 
licking his face — when she saw, I say, the little blue and gold 
apparition, her heart grew pitiful, and, turning to Halbert, she 
said, — • 

“ Why, good gracious me ! You don’t mean to tell me that 
they take such a child as that to sea ; do you ? ” 

“ Oh dear, yes ! ” said Halbert, “ and younger, too. Don’t you 
remember the story about CoUingwood offering his cake to the first 
lieutenant ? He became, remember, a greater man than Nelson, 
in all except worldly honour.” 

“ Would you ask him to come and sit by me, if you please ? ” 
said Alice. 

So Halbert went and fetched him in, and he sat and had his 
breakfast between Alice and Sam. They were all delighted with 
him ; such a child, and yet so bold and self-helpful, making 
himself quietly at home, and answering such questions as were 
put to him modestly and well. Would that all midshipmen were 
like him ! 

But it became time to go on board, and Captain Blockstrop, 
coming by where Alice sat, said, laughing, — 

“ I hope you are not giving my officer too much marmalade. 
Miss Brentwood ? He is over-young to be trusted with a jam-pot, 
— eh. Tacks?” 

“ Too young to go to sea, I should say,” said Alice. 

“Not too young to be a brave-hearted boy, however ! ” said the 
Captain. “ The other day, in Sydney harbour, one of my marines 
who couldn’t swim went overboard and this boy soused in after 
him, and carried the life-buoy to him, in spite of sharks. What 
do you think of that for a ten-year-old ? ” 

The boy’s face flushed scarlet as the Captain passed on, and he 
held out his hand to Alice to say good-bye. She took it, looked 
at him, hesitated, and then bent down and kissed his cheek — a 
tender, sisterly kiss — something, as Jim said, to carry on board 
with him ! 

Poor little Tacks ! He was a great friend of mine ; so I have 
been tempted to dwell on him. He came to me with letters of 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


S41 


introduction, and stayed at my place six weeks or more. He served 
brilliantly, and rose rapidly, and last year only I heard that Lieu- 
tenant Tacks had fallen in the dust, and never risen again, just at 
the moment that the gates of Delhi were burst down, and our 
fellows went swarming in to vengeance. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

AN EAKTHQUAKE, A COLLIEEY EXPLOSION, AND AN ADVENTURE. 

So the Captain, the Colonial Secretary, and the small midshipman 
left the station and went on board again, disappearing from this 
history for evermore. The others all went home and grew warlike, 
arming themselves against the threatened danger ; but still weeks, 
nay months, rolled on, and winter w^as turning into spring, and yet 
the country side remained so profoundly tranquil that every one 
began to believe that the convicts must after all have been dro^vned, 
and that the boat found by sagacious Blockstrop had been capsized 
and thrown bottom upwards on the beach. So that, before the 
bro’wn flocks began to be spotted with white lambs, all alarm had 
gone by. 

Only four persons, besides Mary Hawker herself, were conversant 
of the fact that the Bushranger and George Hawker were the same 
man. Of these only three, the Doctor, Major Buckley, and Cap- 
tain Brentwood, knew of his more recent appearance on the shore, 
and they, after due consultation, took honest Tom Troubridge into 
their confidence. 

But, as I said, all things went so quietly for two months, that 
at the end of that time no one thought any more of bushrangers 
than they would of tigers. And just about this time, I, Geoffry 
Hamlyn, having finished my last consignment of novels from 
England, and having nothing to do, determined to ride over, and 
spend a day or two with Major Buckley. 

But when I rode up to the door at Baroona, having pulled my 
shirt collar up, and rapped at the door with my whip, out came the 
housekeeper to inform me there was not a soul at home. This 
was deeply provoking, for I had got on a new pair of riding trousers, 
which had cost money, and a new white hat with a blue net veil 
(rather a neat thing too), and I had ridden up to the house under 
the idea that fourteen or fifteen persons were looking at me out of 
window. I had also tickled my old horse, Chanticleer, to make 
him caper and show the excellency of my seat. But when I came 


342 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


to remember that the old horse had nearly bucked me over his 
head instead of capering, and to find that my hat was garnished 
with a large cobweb of what is called by courtesy native silk, with 
half-a-dozen dead leaves sticking in it, I felt consoled that no one 
had seen me approach, and asked the housekeeper with tolerable 
equanimity where they were all gone. 

They were all gone, she said, over to Captain Brentwood’s, and 
goodness gracious knew when they would be back again. Mrs. 
Hawker and Mr. Charles were gone with them. For her part, she 
should not be sorry when Mr. Sam brought Miss Brentwood over 
for good and all. The house was terrible lonesome when they 
were all away. 

I remarked, “ Oho ! ” and asked whether she knew if Mr. 
Troubridge was at Toonarbin. 

No, she said ; he was away again at Port Phillip with store 
cattle ; making a deal of money, she understood, and laying out a 
deal for the Major in land. She wished he would marry Mrs. 
Hawker and settle down, for he was a pleasant gentleman, and fine 
company in a house. Wouldn’t I get off and have a bit of cold 
wild duck and a glass of sherry ? 

Certainly I would. So I gave my horse to the groom and went 
in. I had hardly cut the first rich red slice from the breast of a 
fat teal, when I heard a light step in the passage, and in walked 
my man Dick. You remember him, reader. The man we saw 
five and twenty years ago on Dartmoor, combining with William 
Lee to urge the unhappy George Hawker on to ruin and forgery, 
which circumstance, remember, I knew nothing of at this time. 
The same man I had picked up footsore and penniless in the bush 
sixteen years ago, and who had since lived with me, a most 
excellent and clever servant — the best I ever had. This man now 
came into Major Buckley’s parlour, hat in hand, looking a little 
foolish, and when I saw him my knife and fork were paralysed with 
astonishment. 

“ Why, what the Dickens ” (I used that strong expression) 
“ brings you here, my lad ? ” 

“ I went to Hipsley’s about the colt,” he said, “ and when I got 
home I found you were gone ofi* unexpectedly ; so I thought it 
better to come after you and tell you all about it. He won’t take 
less than thirty-five.” 

“ Man ! man ! ” I said, “ do you mean to say that you have 
ridden fifty miles to tell me the price of a leggy beast like that, 
after I had told you that twenty-four was my highest offer ? ” 

He looked very silly, and I saw very well he had some other 
reason for coming than that. But with a good servant I never ask 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


343 


too many questions, and when I went out a short time after, and 
found him leaning against a fence, and talking earnestly to our old 
acquaintance WiUiam Lee, I thought, “ He wanted an excuse to 
come up and see his old friend Lee. That is quite just and proper, 
and fully accounts for it.” 

Lee always paid me the high compliment of touching his hat to 
me, for old Devon’ sake I suppose. “ How’s all at Toonarbin, 
Lee ? ” I asked. 

“Well and hearty, sir. How is yourself, sir ? ” 

“ Getting older, Lee. Nothing worse than that. Dick, I am 
going on to Captain Brentwood’s. If you like to go back to 
Toonarbin and stay a day or two with Lee, you can do so.” 

“ I would rather come on with you, sir,” he said eagerly. 

“ Ai’e you sure ? ” I said. 

“Quite sure, sir.” And Lee said, “You go on with Mr. 
Hamlyn, Dick, and do your duty, mind.” 

I thought this odd ; but knowing it useless to ask questions of 
an old hand, or try to get any information which was not volunteered, 
I held my tongue and departed, taking Dick with me. 

I arrived at Captain Brentwood’s about three o’clock in the 
afternoon. I flatter myself that I made a very successful approach, 
and created rather a sensation among the fourteen or fifteen 
people who were sitting in the verandah. They took me for a 
distinguished stranger. But when they saw who it was they all 
began calling out to me at once to know how I was, and to 
come in (as if I wasn’t coming in), and when at last I got among 
them, I nearly had my hand shaken off ; and the Doctor, putting 
on his spectacles and looking at me for a minute, asked what I 
had given for my hat. 

Let me see, who was there that day ? There was Mary Hawker, 
looking rather older, and a little worn ; and there was her son 
Charles sitting beside pretty Ellen Mayford, and carrying on a 
terrible flirtation with that young lady, in spite of her fat jolly- 
looking mother, who sat with folded hands beside her. Next to 
her sat her handsome brother Cecil, looking, poor lad ! as miser- 
able as he well could look, although I did not know the causp. 
Then came Sam, beside his mother, whose noble happy face was 
still worth riding fifty miles to see ; and then, standing beside her 
chair, was Alice Brentwood. 

I had never seen this exquisite creature before, and I immedi- 
ately fell desperately and hopelessly in love with her, and told her 
so that same evening, in the presence of Sam. Finding that my 
aftection was not likely to be returned, I enrolled myself as one of 
her knights, and remain so to this present time. 


344 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


The Major sat beside his wife, and the Doctor and Captain 
Brentwood walked up and down, talking politics. There were also 
present, certain Hawbucks, leggy youths with brown faces and 
limp hair, in appearance and dress not unlike English steeple- 
chase-riders who had been treated, on the face and hands, with 
walnut-juice. They never spoke, and the number of them then 
present I am uncertain about, but one of them I recollect could 
spit a good deal farther than any of his brothers, and proved it 
beyond controversy about twice in every three minutes. 

I missed my old friend Jim Brentwood, and was informed that 
he had gone to Sydney, “ on the spree,” as Sam expressed it, 
along with a certain Lieutenant Halbert who was staying on a 
visit with Major Buckley. 

First I sat down by Mary Hawker, and had a long talk with 
her about old times. She was in one of her gay moods, and 
laughed and joked continuously. Then I moved up by invitation, 
to a chair between the Major and his wife, and had a long private 
and confidential conversation with them. 

“ How,” I began, “ is Tom Troubridge ? ” 

“ Tom is perfectly well,” said the Major. “ He still carries on 
his old chronic flirtation mth Mary ; and she is as ready to be 
flirted with as ever.” 

“Why don’t they marry?” I asked, peevishly. “Why on 
earth don’t they marry one another ? What is the good of 
carrying on that old folly so long ? They surely must have made up 
their minds by now. She knows she is a widow, and has known 
it for years.” 

“ Good God ! Hamlyn, are you so ignorant ? ” said the Major. 
And then he struck me dumb by telling me of all that had 
happened latterly : of George Hawker’s reappearance, of his 
identity with the great bushranger, and, lastly, of his second 
appearance, not two months before. 

“ I tell you this in strict confidence, Hamlyn, as one of my 
oldest and best friends. I know how deeply your happiness is 
afiected by all this.” 

I remained silent and thunderstruck for a time, and then I tried 
to turn the conversation : — 

“ Have you had any alarm from bushrangers lately? I heard 
a report of some convicts having landed on the coast.” 

“ All a false alarm ! ” said the Major. “ They were diwvned, 
and the boat washed ashore, bottom upwards.” 

Here the Doctor broke in : “ Hamlyn, is not this very queer 
weather ? ” 

When he called my attention to it, I remarked that the 


GEOFFRY HAMLTN. 


345 


weather was really different from any I had seen before, and 
said so. 

The sky was grey and dull, the distances were clear, and to the 
eye it appeared merely a soft grey autumnal day. But there was 
something very strange and odd in the deadly stillness of all nature. 
Not a leaf moved, not a bird sang, and the air seemed like lead. 
At once Mrs. Buckley remarked, — 

“ I can’t work, and I can’t talk. I am so wretchedly nervous 
that I don’t know what to do with myself, and you know, my 
dear,” she said, appealing to her husband, “ that I am not given 
to that sort of thing.” 

Each man looked at his neighbour, for there was a sound in the 
air now — a weird and awful sound like nothing else in nature. 
To the south arose upon the ear a hollow quivering hum, which 
swelled rapidly into a roar beneath our feet ; then there was a 
sickening shake, a thump, a crash, and away went the Earth- 
quake, groaning off to the northward. 

The women behaved very well, though some of them began to 
cry ; and hearing a fearful row in the kitchen I dashed off there, 
followed by the Doctor. The interior was a chaos of pots and 
kettles, in the centre of which sat the cook, Eleanor, holding on 
by the floor. Every now and then she would give a scream 
which took all the breath out of her ; so she had to stop and fetch 
breath before she could give another. The Doctor stepped through 
the saucepans and camp-ovens, and trying to raise her, said — 

‘‘ Come, get up, my good woman, and give over screaming. All 
danger is over, and you wiU frighten the ladies.” 

At this moment she got her “ second wind,” and as he tried to 
get her up she gave such a yeU that he dropped her again, and 
bolted, stopping his ears ; bolted over a teakettle which had been 
thrown do\vn, and fell prostrate, resounding, like an Homeric 
hero, on to a heap of kitchen utensils, at the feet of Alice, who 
had come in to see what the noise was about. 

“ Good Lord ! ” said he, picking himself up, what lungs she 
has got ! I shall have a singing in my ears to my dying day. 
Yar ! it went through my head like a knife.” 

Sam picked up the cook, and she, after a time, picked up her 
pots, giving, however, an occasional squall, and holding on by the 
dresses, under the impression that another earthquake was coming. 
We left her, however, getting dinner under way, and went back to 
the others, whom we soon set laughing by telling poor Eleanor’s 
misadventures. 

We were all in good spirits now. A brisk cool wind had come 
up from the south, following the earthquake, making a pleasant 


346 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


rustle as it swept across the plain or tossed the forest boughs. 
The sky had got clear, and the nimble air was so inviting that we 
rose as one body to stroll in groups about the garden and wander 
down to the river. 

The brave old river was rushing hoarsely along, clear and full 
between his ruined temple -columns of basalt, as of old. “ What 
a grand salmon-river this would be, Major ! ” said I ; “ what pools 
and stickles are here ! Ah ! if we only could get the salmon- 
spawn through the tropics without its germinating. — Can you tell 
me. Doctor, why these rocks should take the form of columns ? 
Is there any particular reason for it that you know ? ” 

“ You have asked a very puzzling question,” he replied, ‘‘ and 
I hardly know how to answer it. Nine geologists out of ten will 
tell you that basalt is lava cooled under pressure. But I have 
seen it in places where that solution was quite inapplicable. 
However, I can tell you that the same cause which set these 
pillars here, to wall the river, piled up yon Organ-hiU, produced 
the caves of Widderin, the great crater-hollow of Mirngish, and 
accommodated us with that brisk little earthquake which we felt 
just now. For you know that we mortals stand only on a thin 
crust of cooled matter, hut beneath our feet is all molten metal.” 

“ I wish you could give us a lecture on these things. Doctor,” 
I said. 

“ To-morrow,” said he, “ let us ride forth to Mirngish and have 
a picnic. There I will give you a little sketch of the origin of 
that hill.” 

In front of the Brentwoods’ house the plains stretched away for 
a dozen miles or so, a hare sheet of grass with no timber, grey in 
summer, green in winter. About five miles ofi* it began to roll 
into great waves, and then heaved up into a high bald hill, a lofty 
down, capped with black rocks, bearing in its side a vast round 
hollow, at the bottom of which was a little swamp, perfectly cir- 
cular, fringed with a ring of white gum-trees, standing in such an 
exact circle that it was hard to persuade oneself that they were 
not planted by the hand of man. This was the crater of the old 
volcano. Had you stood in it you would have remarked that one 
side was a shelving steep hank of short grass, while the other 
reared up some five hundred feet, a precipice of fire -eaten rock. 
At one end the lip had broken down, pouring a torrent of lava, 
now fertile grass-land, over the surrounding country, which little 
gap gave one a delicious bit of blue distance. All else, as I said, 
was a circular wall of grass, rock, and tumbled slag. 

This was Mirngish. And the day after the earthquake there was 
a fresh eruption in the crater. An eruption of horsemen and 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


347 


horsewomen. An eruption of talk, laughter, pink-bonnets, knives 
and forks, and champagne. Many a pleasant echo came ringing 
back from the old volcano-walls overhead, only used for so many 
ages to hear the wild rattle of the thunder and the scream of the 
hungry eagle. 

AVas ever a poor old worn-out grass-gro'svn volcano used so 
badly? Here into the very pit of Tophet had the audacious 
Captain that very morning sent on a spring-cart of all eatables 
and drinkables, and then had followed himself with a dozen of his 
friends, to eat and drink, and talk and laugh, just in the very 
spot where of old roared and seethed the fire and brimstone of 
Erebus. 

Yet the good old mountain was civil, for we were not blovm into 
the air, to be a warning to all people picnicing in high places ; but 
when we had eaten and drunk, and all the ladies had separately und 
collectively declared that they were so fond of the smell of tobacco 
in the open air, we followed the Doctor, who led the way to the 
summit of the hill. . 

I arrived last, having dragged dear fat old Mrs. Mayford up the 
slippery steep. The Doctor had perched himself on the highest 
lame-wom crag, and when we all had grouped ourselves below 
him, and while the wind swept pleasantly through the grass, and 
rushed humming through the ancient rocks, he in a clear melo- 
dious voice thus began : — 

“ Of old the great sea heaved and foamed above the ground on 
which we stand ; aye, above this, and above yon farthest snowy 
peak, which the westering sun begins to tinge with crimson. 

“ But in the lapse of ten thousand changing centuries, the lower 
deeps, acted on by some Plutonic agency, began to grow shallow ; 
and the imprisoned tides began to foam and roar as they struggled 
to follow the moon, their leader, angry to find that the stillness of 
their ancient domain was year by year invaded by the ever-rising land. 

“ At that time, had man been on the earth to see it, those 
towering Alps were a cluster of lofty islands, each mountain pass 
which divides them was a tide-swept fiord, in and out of which, 
twice in the day, age after age, rushed the sea, bringing down 
those vast piles of water-worn gravel which you see accumulated, 
and now covered with dense vegetation, at the mouth of each 
great valley. 

“ So twenty thousand years went on, and all this fair champaign 
country which we overlook became, first a sand-bank, then a dreary 
stretch of salt- saturated desert, and then, as the roar of the re- 
tiring ocean grew fainter and fainter, began to sustain such vege- 
tation as the Lord thought fit. 


348 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


‘‘ A thousand years are but as yesterday to Him, and I can give 
you no notion as to how many hundred thousand years it took to 
do all this ; or what productions covered the face of the country. 
It must have been a miserably poor region : nothing but the debris 
of granite, sandstone, and slate ; perhaps here and there partially 
fertilised by rotting sea-weed, dead fish and shells ; things which 
would, we may assume, have appeared and flourished as the water 
grew shallower. 

“ New elements were wanting to make the country available for 
man, so soon to appear in his majesty ; and new elements were 
forthcoming. The internal fires so long imprisoned beneath the 
weight of the incumbent earth, having done their duty in raising 
the continent, began to find vent in every weak spot caused by its 
elevation. 

Here, where we stand, in this great crack between the granite 
and the sandstone, they broke out with all their wildest fury ; hurl- 
ing stones high in the air, making midday dark with clouds of 
ashes, and pouring streams of lava far and wide. 

“ So the country was desolated by volcanoes, but only desolated 
that it might grow greener and richer than ever, with a new and 
hitherto unknown fertility ; for, as the surface of the lava disinte- 
grated, a new soil was found, containing all the elements of the old 
one, and many more. These are your black clay, and your red 
burnt soil, which, I take it, are some of the richest in the world. 

“ Then our old volcano, our familiar Mirngish, in w'hose crater 
we have been feasting, grew still for a time, for many ages probably ; 
but after that I see the traces of another eruption ; the worst, 
perhaps, that he ever accomplished. 

“He had exhausted himself, and gradually subsided, leaving a 
perfect cup or crater, the accumulation of the ashes of a hundred 
eruptions ; nay, even this may have been filled with water, as is 
Mount Gambier, which you have not seen, forming a lake without 
a visible outlet ; the water draining off at that level where the 
looser scoriae begin. 

“ But he burst out again, filling this great hollow with lava, till 
the accumulation of the molten matter broke through the weaker 
part of the wall, and rolled away there, out of that gap to the 
northward, and forming what you now call the ‘ stony rises,’— 
turning yon creek into steam, which by its explosive force formed 
that fantastic cap of rocks, and, swelling into great bubbles under 
the hot lava, made those long underground hollows which we now 
know as the caves of Bar-ca-nah. 

“ Is he asleep for ever? I know not. He may arise again in 
his wrath and fill the land with desolation ; for that earthquake we 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


349 


felt yesterday was but a wild throe of the giant struggling to bo 
free. 

“ Let us hope that he may not break his chains, for as I stand 
here gazing on those crimson Alps, the spirit of prophecy is upon 
me, and I can see far into the future, and all the desolate land- 
scape becomes peopled with busy figures. 

“I see the sunny slopes below me yellow with trellissed vines. 
They have gathered the vintage, and I hear them singing at the 
wine-press. They sing that the exhausted vineyards of the old 
world yield no wine so rare, so rich, as the fresh volcanic slopes 
of the southern continent, and that the princes of the earth send 
their wealth that their hearts may get glad from the juice of the 
Australian grapes. 

“ Beyond I see fat black ridges grow yellow with a thousand 
cornfields. I see a hmidred happy homesteads, half-hidden by 
clustering wheatstacks. What do they want with all that corn ? 
say you ; where is their market ? 

“ There is their market ! Away there on the barren forest 
ranges. See, the timber is gone, and a city stands there instead. 
What is that on the crest of the hill ? A steam-engine : nay, 
see, there are five of them, working night and day, fast and busy. 
Their cranks gleam and flash under the same moon that grew red 
and lurid when old Mirngish vomited fire and sm.oke twenty thou- 
sand years ago. As I listen I can hear the grinding of the busy 
quartz-mill. What are they doing ? you ask. They are gold-mining. 

“ They have found gold here, and gold in abundance, and hither 
have come, by ship and steamship, all the unfortunate of the earth. 
The English factory labourer and the faimer-ridden peasant ; the 
Irish pauper; the starved Scotch Highlander. I hear a grand 
swelling chorus rising above the murmur of the evening breeze ; 
that is sung by German peasants revelling in such plenty as they 
never knew before, yet still regretting fatherland, and then I hear 
a burst of Italian melody replying. Hungarians are not wanting, 
for all the oppressed of the earth have taken refuge here, glorying 
to live under the free government of Britain ; for she, warned by 
American experience, has granted to all her colonies such rights 
as the British boast of possessing.” 

I did not understand him then. But, since I have seen the 
living wonder of BaUarat, I understand him well enough. 

He ceased. But the Major cried out, “ Go on. Doctor, go on. 
Look fartlier yet, and tell us what you see. Give us a bit more 
poetiy w'hile your hand is in.” 

He faced round, and I fancied I could detect a latent smile 
about his mouth. 


350 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“I see,” said he, “a vision of a nation, the colony of the 
greatest race on the earth, who began their career with more 
advantages than ever fell to the lot of a young nation yet. War 
never looked on them. Not theirs was the lot to fight, like the 
Americans, through bankruptcy and inexperience towards freedom 
and honour. No. Freedom came to them. Heaven-sent, red- 
tape-bound, straight from Downing-street. Millions of fertile 
acres, gold in bushels, were theirs, and yet ” 

“ Go on,” said the Major. 

“I see a vision of broken railway arches and ruined farms. I 
see a vision of a people surfeited with prosperity and freedom 
grown factious, so that now one party must command a strong 
majority ere they can pass a law the goodness of which no one 
denies. I see a bankrupt exchequer, a drunken Governor, an 
Irish ministry, a ” 

“ Come down out of that,” roared the Major, “ before I pull 
you down. You’re a pretty fellow to come out for a day’s 
pleasure ! Jeremiah was a saint to him,” he added, turning 
appealingly to the rest of us. Hear my opinion, ‘per contra,’ 
Doctor. I’ll be as near right as you.” 

“ Go on, then,” said the Doctor. 

“ I see,” began the Major, “ the Anglo-Saxon race ” 

“ Don’t forget the Irish, Jews, Germans, Chinese, and other 
barbarians,” interrupted the Doctor. 

“ Asserting,” continued the Major, scornfully, “ as they always 
do, their right to all the unoccupied territories of the earth ” 

(“ Blackfellow’s claims being ignored,” interpolated the Doctor.) 

“ And filling all the harbours of this magnificent country ” 

(“ Want to see them.”) 

“ With their steamships and their sailing vessels. Say there 
be gold here, as I believe there is, the time must come when the 
mines will be exhausted. What then ? AVith our coals we shall 
supply ” 

(“ Newcastle,” said the Doctor, again.) 

“ The British fleets in the East Indies ” 

“And compete with Borneo,” said the Doctor, quietly, “which 
contains more coal than ever India will burn, at one-tenth the 
distance from her that we are. If that is a specimen of your 
prophecies. Major, you are but a Micaiah, after all.” 

“ AVell,” said the Major, laughing, “ I cannot reel it off quite 
so quick as you ; but think we shall hardly have time for any 
more prophesying ; the sun is getting very low.” 

We turned and looked to westward. The lofty rolling snow- 
downs had changed to dull lead-colour, as the sun went down in a 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


351 


red haze behind them ; only here and there some little elevated 
pinnacle would catch the light. Below the mountain lay vast 
black sheets of woodland, and nearer still was the river, marked 
distinctly by a dense and rapidly-rising line of fog. 

“We are going to have a fog and a frost,” said the Major. 
“We had better hurry home,” 

Behind all the others rode Alice, Sam, and myself. I was 
fearful ot being “ de trop,” hut when I tried to get forward to the 
laughing, chattering crowd in front, these two young lovers raised 
such an outcry that I was fain to stay with them, which I was 
well pleased to do. 

Behind us, however, rode three mounted servants, two of Cap- 
tain Brentwood’s, and my man Dick. 

We were almost in sight of the river, nearly home in fact, when 
there arose a loud lamentation from Alice. 

“ Oh, my bracelet ! my dear bracelet ! I have lost it.” 

“ Have you any idea where you dropped it ? ” I inquired. 

“ Oh, yes,” she said. “I am sure it must have been when I 
fell down, scrambling up the rocks, just before the Doctor began 
his lecture. Just as I reached the top, you know, I fell down, 
and I must have lost it there.” 

“ I will ride back and find it, then, in no time,” I 
said. 

“ No, indeed. Uncle Jefi*,” said Sam. “ I will go back.” 

“I use an uncle’s authority,” I replied, “and I forbid you. 
That miserable old pony of yours, which you have chosen to bring 
out to-day, has had quite work enough, without ten miles extra. 
I condescend to no argument ; here I go.” 

I turned, with a kind look from both of them, hut ere I had 
gone ten yards, my servant Dick was alongside of me. 

“ Where are you going, sir ? ” said he. 

“ I am going hack to Mirngish,” I replied. “Miss Alice has 
dropped her bracelet, and I am going hack for it.” 

“ I will come with you, sir,” he said. 

“ Indeed no, Dick ; there is no need. Go hack to your 
supper, lad, I shan’t he long away.” 

“lam coming with you, sir,” he replied. “Company is a good 
thing sometimes.” 

“ Well, boy, I said, if you will come, I shall he glad of your 
company; so come along.” 

I had noticed lately that Dick never let me go far alone, hut 
would always be with me. It gave rise to no suspicion in my 
mind. He had been tried too often for that. But still, I thought 
it strange. 


352 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


On this occasion, we had not ridden far before he asked me a 
question which rather surprised me. He said, — 

“ Mr. Hamlyn ; do you carry pistols ? ” 

“ Why, Hick, boy ? ” I said, “ why should I ? ” 

“Look you here, Mr. Hamlyn,” said he. “Have you tried 
me?” 

“ I have tried you for twenty years. Hick, and have not found 
you wanting.” 

“ Ah ! ” said he, “ that’s good hearing. You’re a magistrate, 
sir, though only just made. But you know that coves like me, 
that have been in trouble, get hold of information which you 
beaks can’t. And I tell you, sir, there’s bad times coming for 
this country side. You carry your pistols, sir, and, what’s more, 
you nse ’em. See here.” 

He opened his shirt, and showed me a long sharp knife inside. 

“ That’s what I carries, sir, in these times, and you ought to 
carry ditto, and a brace of barkers besides. We shan’t get back 
to the Captain’s to-night.” 

We were rising on the first shoulder of Mirngish, and daylight 
was rapidly departing. I looked back. Nothing but a vast sea of 
fog, one snow peak rising from it like an iceberg from a frozen sea, 
piercing the clear frosty air like a crystal of lead and silver. 

“ We must huny on,” I said, “ or we shall never have day- 
light to find the bracelet. We shall never find our way home 
through that fog, without a breath of wind to guide us. What 
shall we do ? ” 

“I noticed to-day, sir,” said Hick, “a track that crossed the 
hill to the east ; if we can get on that, and keep on it, we are 
sure to get somewhere. It would be better to follow that than go 
blundering across the plain through such a mist as that.” 

As he was speaking, we had dismounted and commenced our 
search. In five minutes, so well did our recollection serve us. 
Hick had got the bracelet, and, having mounted our horses, we 
deliberated what was next to be done. 

A thick fog covered the whole country, and was rapidly creep- 
ing up to ’the elevation on which we stood. To get home over 
the plains without a compass seemed a hopeless matter. So we 
determined to strike for the track which Hick had noticed in the 
morning, and get on it before it was dark. 

We plunged down into the sea of fog, and, by carefully keeping 
the same direction, we found our road. The moon was nearly 
full, which enabled us to distinguish it, though we could never see 
above five yards in front of us. 

We followed the road above an hour ; then we began to see 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


353 


ghostly tree-stems through the mist. They gi'ew thicker and 
more frequent. Then we saw a light, and at last rode up to a 
hut-door, cheered by the warm light, emanating from a roaring 
fire within, which poured through every crack in the house- side, 
and made the very fog look warm. 

I held Dick’s horse while he knocked. The door was opened 
hy a wee feeble old man, about sixty, with a sharp clever face, 
and an iron-grey rough head of hair. 

“Night, daddy,” said Dick. “Can me and my master stay 
here to-night ? We’re all abroad in this fog. The governor will 
leave something handsome behind in the morning, old party, I 
know.” (This latter was in a whisper.) 

“ Canst thou stay here, say’st thou?” replied the old fellow. 
“ In course thou canst. But thy master’s money may bide in a’s 
pouch. Get thy saddles off, lad, and come in ; ’tis a smittle 
night for rheumatics.” 

I helped Dick to take off the saddles, and, having hobbled our 
horses with stirrup-leathers, we w^ent in. 

Our little old friend was the hut-keeper, as I saw at a glance. 
The shepherd was sitting on a block before the fire, in his shirt, 
smoking his pipe and warming his legs preparatory to turning in. 

I understood him in a moment, as I then thought (though I 
was much deceived). A short, wiry, black-headed man, with a 
cunning face — convict all over. He rose as w'e came in, and gave 
us good evening. I begged he would not disturb himself ; so he 
moved his block into the corner, and smoked away with that lazy 
indifference that only a shepherd is master of. 

But the old man began bustling about. He made us sit domi 
before the fire, and make ourselves comfortable. He never 
ceased talking. 

“ I’ll get ye lads some supper just now,” said he. “There’s na 
but twa bunks i’ the hut ; so master and man must lie o’ the floor, 
’less indeed the boss lies in my bed, which he’s welcome to. 
We’ve a plenty blankets, though, and sheepskins. We’ll mak ye 
comfortable, boys. There’s a mickle back log o’ the fire, and 
ye’ll lie warm, I’se warrant ye. There’s cowd beef, sir (to me), 
and good breed, no’ to mind hoggins o’ tea. Ye’ll be comfort- 
able, will ye. What’s yer name? ” 

“ Hamljm,” I said. 

“ Oh, ay! Ye’re Hamlyn and Stockbridge ! I ken ye well ; 
I keimed yer partner : a good man — a very good man, a man o’ 
ten thousand. He was put down up north. A bad job, a very 
bad job ! Ye gat terrible vengeance, though. He hewed Agag 
in pieces ! T’ Governor up there to Sydney was wild angry at 

24 


354 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


what ye did, but he darena’ say much. He knew that every free 
man’s heart went with ye. It were the sword of the Lord and of 
Gideon that ye fought with ! Ye saved many good lives by that 
raid of yours after Stockbridge was killed. The devils wanted a 
lesson, and ye gar’d them read one wi’ a vengeance ! ” 

During this speech, which was uttered in a series of inter- 
jections, he had made our supper, and drawn back to the fire. 
The shepherd had tumbled into his blankets, and was snoring. 
The old man, having cleared away the things, came and 
sat down beside us. The present of a fig of tobacco won his 
heart utterly, and he, having cut up a pipeful, began talking 
again. 

“Why,” said he, “it’s the real Barret’s twist — the very real 
article ! Eh, master, ye’re book-learned : do you ken where this 
grows ? It must be a fine country to bring up such backer as 
this ; some o’ they Palm Isles, I reckon.” 

“ Virginia,” I told him, “or Carolina, one of the finest countries 
in the world, where they hold slaves.” 

“Ah,” said he, “ they couldn’t get white men to mess with 
backer and such in a hot country, and in course, every one knows 
that blacks won’t work till they’re made. That’s why they 
bothers themselves with ’em, I reckon. But, Lord ! they are 
useless trash. White convicts is useless enough ; think what 
black niggers must be ! ” 

How about the gentleman in bed ? I thought ; but he was 
snoring comfortably. 

“ I am a free man, myself,” continued the old man. “ I never 
did aught, ay, or thought o’ doing aught, that an honest man 
should not do. But I’ve lived among convicts twenty odd year, 
and, do you know, sir, sometimes I hardly know richt frae wang. 
Sometimes I see things that whiles I think I should inform of, 
and then the devil comes and tells me it would be dishonourable. 
And then I believe him till the time’s gone by, and after that I 
am miserable in my conscience. So I haven’t an easy time of it, 
though I have good times, and money to spare.” 

I was getting fond of the honest, talkative old fellow ; so when 
Dick asked him if he wanted to turn in, and he answered no, I 
was weU pleased. 

“ Can’t you pitch us a yarn, daddy?” said Dick. “ Tell us 
something about the old country. I should like well to hear what 
you were at home.” 

“I’ll pitch ye a yarn, lad,” he replied, “if the master don’t want 
to turn in. I’m fond of talking. All old men are, I think,” he 
said, appealing to me. “ The time’s coming, ye see, when the 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


355 


gift of speech mil he gone from me. It’s a great gift. But 
happen we won’t lose it after all.” 

I said, “No, that I thought not; that I thought on the other 
side of the grave we should both speak and hear of higher things 
than we did in the flesh.” 

“ Happen so,” said he ; “ I think so too, sometime. I’ll give 
ye my yarn ; I have told it often. Howsoever, neither o’ ye have 
heard it, so ye’re the luckier that I tell it better by frequent re- 
petition. Here it is : — 

“ I was a collier lad, always lean, and not well favoured, though 
I was active and strong. I was small too, and that set my father’s 
heart agin me somewhat, for he was a gran’ man, and a mighty 
fighter. 

“ But my elder brother Jack, he was a mighty fellow, God bless 
him ; and when he was eighteen he weighed twelve stone, and was 
earning man’s wages, tho’ that I was hurrying still. I saw that 
father loved him better than me, and whiles that vexed me, but 
I most times it didn’t, for I cared about the lad as well as father 

' did, and he liked me the same. He never went far without me ; 

and whether he fought, or whether he drunk, I must be wi’ him 
; and help. 

* “ Well, so we went on till, as I said, I was seventeen, and he 

eighteen. We never had a word till then ; we were as brothers 
i should be. But at this time we had a quarrel, the first we ever 
1 had ; ay, and the last, for we got something to mind this one by. 

“ We both worked in the same pit. It was the Southstone Pit ; 
happen you’ve heard of it. No ? Well, these things get soon 
forgot. Father had been an overman there, but was doing better 
now above ground. He and mother kept a bit shop, and made 
money. 

“ There was a fair in our village, a poor thing enough ; but 
t when we boys were children we used to look forward to it eleven 

1 months out o’ twelve, and the day it came round we used to 

! go to father, and get sixpence, or happen a shilling apiece to 
f spend. 

; “ Well, time went on till we came to earn money ; but still we 

[ kept up the custom, and went to the old man reg’lar for our fairin’, 

J and he used to laugh and chafi* us as he’d give us a fourpenny or 
f such, and we liked the joke as well as he. 

“ Well, this time — it was in ’12, just after the comet, just the 
worst times of the war, the fair came round 24th of May, I weU 
remember, and we went in to the old man to get summut to spend — 
just for a joke, like. 


356 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ He’d lost money, and been vexed ; so when Jack asked him 
for his fairin’ he gi’ed him five shillin’, and said, ‘ I’ll go to gaol 
but what my handsome boy shan’t have summut to treat his friends 
to beer.’ But when I axed him, he said, ‘Earn man’s wages 
and thee’ll get a man’s fairin’,’ and heaved a penny at me. 

“ That made me wild mad, I tell you. I wasn’t only angry wi’ 
the old man, but I was mad wi’ Jack, poor lad ! The devil of 
jealousy had got into me, and, instead of kicking him out I nursed 
him. I ran out o’ the house, and away into the fair, and drunk, 
and fought, and swore like a mad one. 

“I was in one of the dancing booths, half drunk, and a 
young fellow came to me, and said, ‘ Vfhere has thee been ? Do 
thee know thy brother has foughten Jim Perry, and beaten 
him ? ’ 

“ I felt like crying, to think my brother had fought, and I not 
there to set him up. But I swore, and said, ‘ I wish Jim Perry 
had killed un ; ’ and then I sneaked off home to bed, and cried 
like a lass. 

“And next morning I was up before him, ^nd down the pit. 
He worked a good piece from me, so I did not see him, and it came 
on nigh nine o’clock before I began to wonder why the viewer 
had not been round, for I had heard say there was a foul place cut 
into by some of them, and at such times the viewer generally looks 
into every corner. 

“ Well, about nine, the viewer and underviewer came up with 
the overman, and stood talking alongside of me, when there came 
a something sudden and sharp, as tho’ one had boxed your ears, 
and then a ‘ whiz, whiz,’ and the viewer stumbled a one side, and 
cried out, ‘ God save us ! ’ 

“ I hardly knew what had happened till I heard him singing 
out clear and firm, ‘ Come here to me, you lads ; come here. 
Keep steady, and we’ll be all right yet.’ Then I knew it was a 
fire, and a sharp one, and began crying out for Jack. 

“ I heard him calling for me, and then he ran up and got hold 
of me ; and so ended the only quarrel we ever had, and that was 
a one-sided one. 

“ ‘ Are you all here ? ’ said the viewer. ‘ Now follow me, and 
if we meet the afterdamp hold your breath and run. I am afraid 
it’s a bad job, but we may get through yet.’ 

“We had not gone fifty yards before we came on the afterdamp, 
filling the headway like smoke. Jack and I took hold of each 
other’s collars and ran, but before we were half way through, he 
fell. I kept good hold of his shirt, and dragged him on on the 
ground. I felt as strong as a horse ; and in ten seconds, which 


GEOFFKY H^LYN. 


857 


seemed to me like ten hours, I dragged him out under the shaft 
into clear air. At first I thought he was dead, hut he was still 
alive, and very little of that. His heart heat very slow, and I 
thought he’d die ; hut I knew if he got clear air that he might 
come round. 

“ When we had gotten to the shaft bottom we found it all full of 
smoke ; the waft had gone straight up, and they on the top told us 
after that all the earth round was shook, and the hlack smoke and 
coal-dust flew up as though from a gun-harrel. Any way it was 
strong enough to carry away the machine, so we waited there ten 
minutes and wondered the basket did not come down ; but they 
above, meanwhile, were rigging a rope to an old horse-whim, 
and as they could not get horses, the men run the poles round 
themselves. 

“ But we at the bottom knew nothing of aU this. There were 
thirty or so in the shaft bottom, standing there, dripping wet wi’ 
water, and shouting for the others, who never came ; now the 
smoke began to show in the west drive, and we knew the mine 
was fired, and yet we heard nought from those above. 

“ But what I minded most of all was, that Jack was getting 
better. I knew we could not well be lost right under the shaft, so 
I did not swear and go on like some of them, because they did not 
mind us above. When the basket came down at last, I and Jack 
went up among the first, and there I saw such a sight, lad, as ye’ll 
never see till ye see a colliery explosion. There were hundreds 
and hundreds there. Most had got friends or kin in the pit, and 
as each man came up, his wife or his mother would seize hold of 
him and carry on terrible. 

“ But the worst were they whose husbands and sons never came 
up again, and they were many ; for out of one hundred and thirty- 
one men in the pit, only thirty-nine came up alive. Directly we 
came to bank, I saw father ; he was first among them that were 
helping, working like a horse, and directing ever} thing. When he 
saw us, he said, ‘ Thank the Lord, there’s my two boys. I am 
not a loser to-day ! ’ and came running to us, and helped me to 
carry Jack down the bank. He was very weak and sick, but the 
air freshened him up wonderful. 

“ I told father all about it, and he said, ‘ I’ve been wrong, and 
thou’st been wrong. Don’t thou get angry for nothing ; thou hast 
done a man’s work to-day, at all events. Now come and bear a 
hand. T’owd ’ooman will mind the lad.’ 

“ We went back to the pit’s mouth ; the men were tearing round 
the whim faster than horses would a’ done it. And first amongst 
’em all was old Mrs. Cobley, wi’ her long grey hair down her back, 


358 


THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 


doing the work o’ three men ; for her two boys were down still, and 
I knew for one that they were not with us at the bottom ; but when 
the basket came up with the last, and her two boys missing, she 
went across to the master, and asked him what he was going to 
do, as quiet as possible. 

“ He said he was going to ask some men to go down, and my 
father volunteered to go at once, and eight more went with him. 
They were soon up again, and reported that all the mine was 
full of smoke, and no one had dared leave the shaft bottom fifty 
yards. 

“ ‘ It’s clear enough, the mine’s fired, sir,’ said my father tc 
the owner. ‘ They that’s down are dead. Better close it, sir.’ 

“ ‘ What ! ’ screamed old Mrs. Cobley, ‘ close the pit, ye dog, 
and my boys down there ? Ye wouldn’t do such a thing, master 
dear?’ she continued ; ‘ye couldn’t do it.’ Many others were 
wild when they heard the thing proposed ; but while they raved 
and argued, the pit began to send up a reek of smoke like the 
mouth of hell, and then the master gave orders to close the shaft, 
and a hundred women knew they were widows, and went weeping 
home. 

“ And Jack got well. And after the old man died, we came out 
here. Jack has gotten a public-house in Yass, and next year 
I shall go home and live with him. 

“ And that’s the yarn about the fire at the Southstone Pit.” 

We applauded it highly, and after a time began to talk about 
lying down, when on a sudden we heard a noise of horses’ feet 
outside ; then the door was opened, and in came a stranger. 

He was a stranger to me, but not to my servant, who I could 
see recognised him, though he gave no sign of it in words. I also 
stared at him, for he was the handsomest young man I had ever 
seen. 

Handsome as an Apollo, beautiful as a leopard, but with such a 
peculiar style of beauty, that when you looked at him you instinc- 
tively felt at your side for a weapon of defence, for a more reckless, 
dangerous looking man I never yet set eyes on. And while I 
looked at him I recognised him. I had seen his face, or one like 
it, before, often, often. And it seemed as though I had known 
him just as he stood there, years and years ago, on the other side 
of the world. I was almost certain it was so, and yet he seemed 
barely twenty. It was an impossibility, and yet as I looked I 
grew every moment more certain. 

He dashed in in an insolent way. “ I am going to quarter 
here to-night and chance it,” he said. “Hallo! Dick, my 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


359 


prince ! You here ? And what may your name he, old cock ? ” 
he added, turning to me, now seeing me indistinctly for the first 
time, for I was sitting back in the shadow. 

“ My name is Geoffry Hamlyn. I am a Justice of the Peace, 
and I ani at your service,” I said. “ Now perhaps you will favour 
me with your name ? ” 

The young gentleman did not seem to like coming so suddenly 
into close proximity with a “ beak,” and answered defiantly, — 

‘‘ Charles Sutton is my name, and I don’t know as there’s 
anything against me at present.” 

“Sutton,” I said; “ Sutton? I don’t know the name. No, 
I have nothing against you, except that you don’t appear very 
civil.” 

Soon after I rolled myself in a blanket and lay down. Dick 
lay at right angles to me, his feet nearly touching mine. He 
began snoring heavily almost immediately, and just when I was 
going to give him a kick, and tell him not to make such a row, I 
felt him give me a good sharp shove with the heel of his hoot, by 
which I understood that he was awake, and meant to keep awake, 
as he did not approve of the strangers. 

I was anxious about our horses, yet in a short time I could 
keep awake no longer. I slept, and when I next woke, I heard 
voices whispering eagerly together. I silently turned, so that I 
could see whence the voices came, and perceived the hut-keeper 
sitting up in bed, in close confabulation with the stranger. 

“ Those two rascals are plotting some villainy,” I said to myself ; 
“ somebody will he minus a horse shortly, I expect.” And then I 
fell asleep again ; and when I awoke it was broad day. 

I found the young man was gone, and, what pleased me better 
still, had not taken either of our horses with him. So, when we 
had taken some breakfast, we started, and I left the kind little old 
man something to remember me by. 

We had not ridden a hundred yards, before I turned to Dick 
and said, — • 

“Now mind; I don’t want you to tell me anything you don’t 
like, hut pray relieve my mind on one point. Who was that young 
man ? Have I ever seen him before ? ” 

“ I think not, sir ; but I can explain how you come to think you 
have. You remember, sir, that I knew all about Mrs. Hawker’s 
history ? ” 

“Yes! yes! Goon.” 

“ That young fellow is George Hawker’s son.” 

It came upon me like a thunderbolt. This, then, was the illegi- 
timate son that he had by his cousin EUen. Oh miserable child 


360 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


of sin and shame ! to what end, I wondered, had he been saved till 
now ? 

We shall see soon. Meanwhile I turned to my companion and 
said, “ Tell me how he came to be here.” 

“ Why you see, sir, he went on in his father’s ways, and got 
lagged. He found his father out as soon as he was free, which 
wasn’t long first, for he is mortal cunning, and since then they two 
have stuck together. Most times they quarrel, and sometimes they 
fight, but they are never far apart. Hawker ain’t far off 
now.” 

“Now, sir,” he continued, “ I am going to tell you something 
which, if it ever leaks out of your lips again, in such a way as to 
show where it came from, will end my life as sure as if I was hung. 
You remember three months ago that a boatful of men were sup- 
posed to have landed from Cockatoo ? ” 

“Yes,” I said, “I heard it from Major Buckley. But the 
police have been scouring in all directions, and can find nothing 
of them. My opinion is that the boat was capsized, and they 
were all drowned, and that the surf piled the boat over with sea- 
weed. Depend on it they did not land.” 

“ Depend on it they did, sir ; those men are safe and well, and 
ready for any mischief. Hawker was on the look-out for them, and 
they all stowed away till the police cleared off, which they did last 
week. There will be mischief soon. There ; I have told you 
enough to cut my throat, and I’ll tell you more, and convince you 
that I am right. That shepherd at whose hut we stayed last night 
was one of them ; that fellow Avas the celebrated Captain Mike. 
What do you think of that ? ” 

I shuddered as I heard the name of that fell ruffian, and thought 
that I had slept in the hut with him. But when I remembered 
how he was whispering with the stranger in the middle of the 
night, I came to the conclusion that serious mischief was breAving, 
and pushed on through the fog, which still continued as dense as 
ever, and, guided by some directions from the old hut-keeper, I 
got to Captain BrentAvood’s about ten o’clock, and told him and 
the Major the night’s adventures. 

We three armed ourselves secretly and quietly, and Avent back 
to the hut with the determination of getting possession of the 
person of the shepherd Mike, who, Avere he the man Dick accused 
him of being, would have been a prize indeed, being one of the 
leading Van Diemen’s Land rangers, and one of the men reported 
as missing by Captain Blockstrop. 

“ Suppose,” said Captain Brentwood, “ that Ave seize the felloAV, 
and it isn’t him after all ? ” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


861 


Then,” said the Major, “ an action for false imprisonment 
would lie, sir, decidedly. But we will chance it.” 

And when we got there we saw the old hut-keeper, he of the 
colliery explosion experiences, shepherding the sheep himself, and 
found that the man we were in search of had left the hut that 
morning, apparently to take the sheep out. But that going out 
about eleven the old man had found them still in the yard, whereby 
he concluded that the shepherd was gone, which proved to he the 
case. And making further inquiries we found that the shepherd 
had only been hired a month previously, and no man knew whence 
he came : all of which seemed to confirm Dick’s story wonderfully, 
and made us excessively uneasy. And in the end the Major asked 
me to prolong my visit for a time and keep my servant with me, as 
every hand was of use ; and so it fed out that I happened to be 
present at and chronicle all which follows. 


CHAPTER XXXVH. 

IN WHICH GEOKGE HAWKER SETTLES AN OLD SCORE WITH WILLIAM 
LEE, MOST HANDSOMELY, LEAVING, IN FACT, A LARGE BALANCE 
IN HIS OWN FAVOUR. 

I PAUSE here — I rather dread to go on. Although our course has 
been erratic and irregular ; although we have had one character 
disappearing for a long time (like Tom Trouhridge) ; and, although 
we have had another entirely new, coming bobbing up in the 
manner of Punch’s victims, unexpected, and apparently unwanted ; 
although, I say, the course of this story may have been ill- arranged 
in the highest degree, and you may have been continually coming 
across some one in Vol. II. who forced you to go back to Vol. I. 
to find out who he was ; yet, on the whole, we have got on 
pleasantly enough as things go. Now, I am sorry to say I have 
to record two or three fearful catastrophes. The events of the 
next month are seldom alluded to by any of those persons men- 
tioned in the preceding pages ; they are too painful. I remark 
that the Lucknow and Cawnpore men don’t much like talking 
about the affairs of that terrible six weeks ; much for the same 
reason, I suspect, as we, going over our old recollections, always 
omit the occurrences of this lamentable spring. 

The facts contained in the latter end of this chapter I got from 
the Gaol Chaplain at Sydney. 


/ 


362 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


The Major, the Captain, and I, got home to dinner, confirmed 
in our suspicions that mischief was abroad, and very vexed at 
having missed the man we went in search of. Both Mrs. Buckley 
and iUice noticed that something was wrong, but neither spoke a 
word on the subject. Mrs. Buckley now and then looked anxiously 
at her husband, and Alice cast furtive glances at her father. The 
rest took no notice of our silence and uneasiness, little dreaming 
of the awful cloud that was hanging above our heads, to burst, 
alas ! so soon. 

I was sitting next to Mary Hawker that evening, talking over 
old Devon days and Devon people, when she said, — 

‘‘ I think I am going to have some more quiet peaceful times. 
I am happier than I have been for many years. Do you know 
why ? Look there.” 

I shuddered to hear her say so, knowing what I knew, but 
looked where she pointed. Her son sat opposite to us, next to 
the pretty Ellen Mayford. She had dropped the lids over her 
eyes and was smiling. He, with his face turned toward her, was 
whispering in his eager impulsive way, and tearing to pieces a slip 
of paper which he held in his hand. As the firelight fell on his 
face, I felt a chill come over me. The likeness was so fearful ! — 
not to the father (that I had been long accustomed to), but to the 
son, to the half-brother — to the poor lost young soul I had seen 
last night, the companion of desperate men. As it struck me I 
could not avoid a start, and a moment after I would have given a 
hundred pounds not to have done so, for I felt Mary’s hand on my 
arm, and heard her say, in a low voice, — 

“ Cruel ! cruel ! Will you never forget ? ” 

I felt guilty and confused. As usual, on such occasions, Satan 
was at my elbow, ready with a lie, more or less clumsy, and I said, 
“ You do me injustice, Mrs. Hawker, I was not thinking of old 
times. I was astonished at what I see there. Do you think 
there is anything in it ? ” 

“I sincerely hope so,” she said. 

“Indeed, and so do I. It will be excellent on every account. 
Now,” said I, “Mrs. Hawker, will you tell me what has become 
of your old servant, Lee ? I have reasons for asking.” 

“He is in my seiwice still,” she said ; “as useful and faithful 
as ever. At present he is away at a little hut in the ranges, 
looking after our ewes.” 

“ Who is with him ? ” I asked. 

“ Well, he has got a new hand with him, a man who came 
about a month or so ago, and stayed about splitting wood. I 
fancy I heard Lee remark that he had known him before. How- 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


363 


ever, when Lee had to go to the ranges, he wanted a hut-keeper ; 
so this man went up with him.” 

“ What sort of a looking man was he ? ” 

“ Oh, a rather large man, red-haired, much pitted with the 
small-pox.” 

All this made me uneasy. I had asked these questions hy the 
advice of Dick, and, from Mrs. Hawker’s description tallying so 
well with his, I had little doubt that another of the escaped gang 
was living actually in her service, alone, too, in the hut with Lee. 

The day that we went to Mirngish, the circumstances I am 
about to relate took place in Lee’s hut, a lonely spot, eight miles 
from the home station, towards the mountain, and situated in a 
dense dark stringy-hark forest — a wild desolate spot, even as it 
was that afternoon, with the parrots chattering and whistling 
around it, and the bright winter’s sun lighting up the green 
tree -tops. 

Lee was away, and the hut-keeper was the only living soul 
about the place. He had just made some bread, and having 
carried out his camp-oven to cool, was sitting on the bench in 
the sun, lazily thinking what he would do next. 

He was a long, rather powerfully-built man, and seemed at first 
sight, merely a sleepy half-witted fellow, hut at a second glance 
you might perceive that there was a good deal of cunning, and 
some ferocity in his face. He sat for some time, and beginning 
to think that he would like a smoke, he got out his knife pre- 
paratory to cutting tobacco. 

The hut stood at the top of a lone gully, stretching away in 
a vista, nearly hare of trees for a width of about ten yards or so, 
all the way down, which gave it the appearance of a grass-ride, 
walled on each side hy tall dark forest. Looking down this, our 
hut-keeper saw, about a quarter of a mile ofi’, a horseman cross 
from one side to the other. 

He only caught a momentary glimpse of him, hut that was 
enough to show him that it was a stranger. He neither knew 
horse nor man, at least judging by his dress ; and while he was 
still puzzling his brains as to what stranger would he coming to 
such an out-of-the-way place, he heard the “ Chuck, kuk, kuk, 
kuk,” of an opossum close behind the hut, and started to his feet. 

It would of course have startled any hushman to hear an opossum 
cry in broad day, hut he knew what this meant well. It was the 
arranged signal of his gang, and he ran to the place from whence 
the sound came. 

George Hawker was there — well dressed, sitting on a noble 
chestnut horse. They greeted one another with a friendly curse. 


364 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


As is my custom, when recording the conversations of this 
class of worthies, I suppress the expletives, thereby shortening 
them by nearly one half, and depriving the public of much valuable 
information. 

“ Well, old man,” began Hawker, “ is the coast clear ? ” 

“ No one here but myself,” replied the other. “ I’m hut- 
keeping here for one Bill Lee, but he is away. He was one of the 
right sort once himself, I have heard ; but he’s been on the square 
for twenty years, so I don’t like to trust him.” 

“ You are about right there. Moody, my lad,” said HawLer. 
“ I’ve just looked up to talk to you about him, and other matters, 
— I’ll come in. When will he be back ? ” 

“ Not before night, I expect,” said the other. 

“ Well,” said Hawker, “ we shall have the more time to talk ; 
I’ve got a good deal to tell you. Our chaps are all safe and snug, 
and the traps are off. Only two, that’s you and Mike, stayed this 
side of the hill ; the rest crossed the ranges and stowed away in 
an old lair of mine in one of the upper Murray gullies. They’ve 
had pretty hard times, and if it hadn’t been for the cash they 
brought away, they’d have had worse. Now the coast is clear, 
they’re coming back by ones and twos, and next week we shall be 
ready for business. I’m going to be head man this bout, because 
I know the country better than any ; and the most noble Michael 
has consented, for this time only, to act as lieutenant. M e haven’t 
decided on any plans yet, but some think of beginning from the 
coast, because that part will be clearest of traps, they having 
satisfied themselves that we ain’t there. In fact, the wiseacres 
have fully determined that we are all drowned. There’s one devil 
of a foreign doctor knows I’m round though ; he saw me the night 
before you came ashore, and I am nigh sure he knew me. I have 
been watching him, and I could have knocked him over last week 
as clean as a whistle, only, thinks I, it’ll make a stir before the 
time. Never mind. I’ll have him yet. This Lee is a black sheep, 
lad. I’m glad you are here ; you must watch him, and if you 
see him flinch, put a knife in him. He raised the country on me 
once before. I tell you, Jerry, that I’d be hung, and willing, 
to-morrow, to have that chap’s life, and I’d have had it before 
now, only I had to keep still for the sake of the others. That man 
served me the meanest, dirtiest trick, twenty years ago, in the old 
country, that ever you or any other man heard of, and if he catches 
sight of me the game’s up. Mind, if you see cause, you deal 

with him, or else, ” (with an awful oath) “ you answer to the 

others.” 

“ If he’s got to go, he’ll go,” replied the other, doggedly. 


GEOFl’RY HAMEYN. 


365 


“ Don’t you fear me ; Moody the cannibal ain’t a man to 
flinch.” 

“ What, is that tale true, then ? ” asked Hawker, looking at his 
companion with a new sort of interest. 

“Why, in course it is,” replied Moody; “I thought no one 
doubted that. That Van Diemen’s Land bush would starve a 
bandicoot, and Shiner and I walked two days before we knocked 
the boy on the head ; the lad was getting beat, and couldn’t a’ 
gone much further. After three days more we began to watch one 
another, and neither one durst walk first, or go to sleep. Well, 
Shiner gave in first ; he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. 
And then, you know, of course, my own life was dearer than 
his’n.” 

“ My God ! That’s worse than ever I did ! ” said Hawker. 

“ But not worse than you may do, if you persevere. You 
promise well,” said Moody, with a grin. 

Hawker bent and whispered in his ear ; the other listened for a 
time, and then said, — 

“ Make it twenty.” 

Hawker after a little consideration nodded — then the other 
nodded — then they whispered together again. Something out of 
the common this must be, that they, not very particular in their 
confidences, should whisper about it. 

They looked up suddenly, and Lee was standing in the doorway. 

Hawker and he started when they saw one another, but Lee 
recovered himself first, and said, — 

“ George Hawker, it’s many years since we met, and I’m not so 
young as I was. I should like to make peace before I go, as I well 
know that I’m the chief one to blame for you getting into trouble. 
I’m not humbugging you, when I say that I have been often sorry 
for it of late years. But sorrow won’t do any good. If you’ll 
forgive and forget. I’ll do the same. You tried my life once, and 
that’s worse than ever I did for you. And now I’ll tell you, that 
if you want money to get out of the country and set up anywhere 
else, and leave your poor wife in peace. I’ll find it for you out of 
my own pocket.” 

“ I don’t bear any malice,” said Hawker ; “ but I don’t want to 


* This story is true in every particular, and is, or was, notorious in 
Van Diemen’s Land. Two convicts and a boy escaped, and, trying to 
cross the island, got short of provisions. They killed the boy, and lived 
on his flesh while it lasted. After that, one of the men murdered the 
other, whose flesh lasted long enough to take him back to the settlement, 
where he surrendered himself. I ought to apologise for telling such a 
terrible tale, but it is strictly true. 


366 


THE EECOLLEGTIONS OF 


leave the country just yet. I suppose you won’t peach about 
having seen me here ? ” 

“ I shan’t say a word, George, if you keep clear of the home 
station ; hut I won’t have you come about there. So I warn 
you.” 

Lee held out his hand, and George took it. Then he asked him 
if he would stay there that night, and George consented. 

Day was fast sinking behind the trees, and making golden 
boughs overhead. Lee stood at the hut door watching the sun 
set, and thinking, perhaps, of old Devon. He seemed sad, and 
let us hope he was regretting his old crimes while time was left 
him. Night was closing in on him, and having looked once more 
on the darkening sky, and the fog coldly creeping up the gully, 
he turned with a sigh and a shudder into the hut, and shut the 
door. 

Near midnight, and all was still. Then arose a cry upon the 
night so hideous, so wild, and so terrible, that the roosting birds 
dashed off affrighted, and the dense mist, as though in sympa- 
thising fear, prolonged the echoes a hundredfold. One articulate 
cry, “Oh! you treacherous dog!” given with the fierce energy 
of a dying man, and then night returned to her stillness, and the 
listeners heard nothing hut the weeping of the moisture from the 
wintry trees. 

* * -:c- -:f * 

The two perpetrators of the atrocity stood silent a minute or 
more, recovering themselves. Then Hawker said in a fierce 
whisper, — 

“ You clumsy hound ; why did you let him make that noise ? 
I shall never get it out of my head again, if I live till a hundred. 
Let’s get out of this place before I go mad ; I could not stay in 
the house with it for salvation. Get his horse, and come along.” 

They got the two horses, and rode away into the night ; hut 
Hawker, in his nervous anxiety to get away, dropped a handsome 
cavalry pistol, — a circumstance which nearly cost Doctor Mulhaus 
his life. 

They rode till after daylight, taking a course toward the sea, and 
had gone nearly twelve miles before George discovered his loss, and 
broke out into petulant imprecations. 

“ I wouldn’t have lost that pistol for five pounds,” he said ; 
“ no nor more. I shall never have one like it again. I’ve put 
over a parrot at twenty yards with it.” 

“ Go hack and get it then,” said Moody, “if it’s so valuable. 
I’ll camp and wait for you. We want all the arms we can 
g3t.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


367 


‘‘ Not I,” said George ; “I would not go back into that cursed 
hut alone for all the sheep in the country.” 

“You coward,” replied the other; “afraid of a dead man I 
Well, if you won’t, I will : and, mind, I shall keep it for my own 
use.” 

“ You’re welcome to it, if you like to get it,” said George. 
And so Moody rode back. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

HOW DR. MULHAUS GOT BUSHED IN THE RANGES, AND WHAT 
BEFEL HIM THERE. 

I MUST recur to the same eventful night again, and relate another 
circumstance that occurred on it. As events thicken, time gets 
more precious ; so that, whereas at first I thought nothing of 
giving you the events of twenty years or so in a chapter, we are 
now compelled to concentrate time so much that it takes three 
chapters to twenty-four hours. I read a long novel once, the 
incidents of which did not extend over thirty-six hours, and yet 
it was not so profoundly stupid as you would suppose. 

All the party got safe home from the picnic, and were glad 
enough to get housed out of the frosty air. The Doctor, above 
all others, was rampant at the thoughts of dinner, and a good 
chat over a warm fire, and burst out, in a noble bass voice, with 
an old German student’s song about wine and Gretchen, and what 
not. 

His music was soon turned into mourning ; for, as they rode into 
the courtyard, a man came up to Captain Brentwood, and began 
talking eagerly to him. 

It was one of his shepherds, who lived alone with his wife 
towards the mountain. The poor woman, his wife, he said, was 
taken in labour that morning, and was very bad. Hearing there 
was a doctor staying at the home station, he had come down to see 
if he could come to their assistance. 

“ I’ll go, of course,” said the Doctor ; “ but let me get some- 
thing to eat first. Is anybody with her ? ” 

“Yes, a woman was with her; had been staying with them 
some days.” 

“I hope you can find the way in the dark,” said the Doctor, 
“for I can tell you I can’t.” 


368 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OP 


“ No fear, sir,” said the man ; “ there’s a track all the way, 
and the moon’s full. If it wasn’t for the fog it would he as bright 
as day.” 

He took a hasty meal, and started. They went at afoot’s pace, 
for the shepherd was on foot. The track was easily seen, and 
although it was exceedingly cold, the Doctor, being well wrapped 
up, contrived, with incessant smoking, to be moderately com- 
fortable. All external objects being a blank, he soon turned to 
his companion to see what he could get out of him. 

“ What part of the country are you from, my friend ? ” 

“ Fra’ the Isle of Skye,” the man answered. “ I’m one of the 
Macdonalds of Skye.” 

“ That’s a very ancient family, is it not ? ” said the doctor at a 
venture, knowing he could not go wong with a Highlander. 

“ Very ancient, and weel respeckit,” the man answered. 

“ And who is your sheik, rajah, chieftain, or what you call 
him ? ” 

“ My lord Macdonald. I am cousin to my lord.” 

“ Indeed ! He owns the whole island, I suppose ? ” 

“ There’s Mackinnons live there. But they are interlopers ; 
they are worthless trash,” and he spit in disgust. 

“ I suppose,” said the Doctor, “ a Mackinnon would return the 
compliment, if speaking of a Macdonald.” 

The man laughed, and said, he supposed “Yes,” then added, 
“ See ! what’s yon ? ” 

“ A white stump burnt black at one side, — what did you think 
it was ? ” 

“ I jaloused it might be a ghaist. There’s a many ghaists and 
bogles about here.”.” 

“ I should have thought the country was too young for those 
gentry,” said the Doctor. 

“ It’s a young country, but there’s been muckle wickedness done 
in it. And what are those blacks do you think ? — next thing to 
devils — at all events they’re no’ exactly human.” 

“ Impish, decidedly,” said the Doctor. “ Have you ever seen 
any ghosts, friend ? ” 

“ Ay ! many. A fortnight agone, come to-morrow, I saw the 
ghost of my wife’s brother in broad day. It was the time of the 
high wind ye mind of ; and the rain drove so thick I could no’ see 
all my sheep at once. And a man on a white horse came fleeing 
before the wind close past me ; I knew him in a minute ; it was 
my wife’s brother, as I tell ye, that was hung fifteen years agone 
for sheep -stealing, and he wasn’t so much altered as ye’d think.” 

“ Some one else like him ? ” suggested the Doctor. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


869 


‘‘ Deil a fear,” replied the man, ‘‘ for when I cried out and said, 

‘ What, Col, lad ! Gang hame, and lie in yer grave, and dinna 
trouble honest folk,’ he turned and rode away through the rain, 
straight from me.” 

“ Well ! ” said the Doctor, “ I partly agree with you that the 
land’s bewitched. I saw a man not two months ago who ought to 
have been dead five or six years at least. But are you quite sure 
the man you saw was hung ? ” 

“ Well nigh about,” he replied. “ When we sailed from Skye 
he was under sentence, and they weren’t over much given to re- 
prieve for sheep-stealing in those days. It was in consequence o’ 
that that I came here.” 

“ That’s a very tolerable ghost story,” said the Doctor. “ Have 
you got another ? If you have, I shouldn’t mind hearing it, as it 
will beguile the way.” 

‘‘ Did ye ever hear how Faithful’s lot were murdered by the 
blacks up on the Merrimerangbong ? ” 

“No, but I should like to ; is it a ghost story ? ” 

“ Deed ay, and is it. This is how it happened : — When Faith- 
ful came to take up his country across the mountains yonder, they 
were a strong party, enough to have been safe in any country, but 
whether it was food was scarce, or whether it was on account of 
getting water, I don’t know, but they separated, and fifteen of 
them got into the Yackandandah country before the others. 

“ Well, you see, they were pretty confident, being still a strong 
mob, and didn’t set any watch or take any care. There was one 
among them (Cranky Jim they used to call him — he has told me 
this yarn — he used to be about Reid’s mill last year) who always 
was going on at them to take more care, but they never heeded 
him at all. 

“ They found a fine creek, with. plenty of feed and water, and 
camped at it to wait till the others came up. They saw no blacks, 
nor heard of any, and three days were past, and they began to 
wonder why the others had not overtaken them. 

“ The third night they were all sitting round the fire, laughing 
and smoking, when they heard a loud co’ee on the opposite side 
of the scrub, and half-a-dozen of them started up and sang out, 

‘ There they are ! ’ 

“ Well, they all began co’eeing again, and they heard the others 
in reply, apparently all about in the scrub. So off they starts, 
one by one, into the scrub, answering and hallooing, for it seemed 
to them that their mates were scattered about, and didn’t know 
where they were. Well, as I said, fourteen of them started into 
the scrub, to collect the party and bring them up to the fire ; only 

25 


370 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


old Cranky Jim sat still in the camj^. He believed, with the 
others, that it was the rest of their party coining up, but he soon 
began to wonder how it was that they were so scattered. Then he 
heard one of them scream, and then it struck him all at once that 
this was a dodge of the blacks to draw the men from the camp, 
and, when they were abroad, cut them off one by one, plunder the 
drays, and drive off the sheep. 

“ So he dropped, and crawled away in the dark. He heard the 
co’ees grow fewer and fewer as the men were speared one by one, 
and at last everything was quiet, and then he knew he was right, 
and he rose up and fled away. 

“ In two days he found the other party, and told them what had 
happened. They came up, and there was some sharp fighting, but 
they got a good many of their sheep back. 

“ They found the men lying about singly in the scrub, all 
speared. They buried them just where they found each one, for 
it was hot weather. They buried them four foot deep, but they 
wouldn’t lie still. 

“ Every night, about nine o’clock, they get up again, and begin 
co’eeing for an hour or more. At first there’s a regular coronach 
of them, then by degrees the shouts get fewer and fewer, and, just 
when you think it’s all over, one will break out loud and clear close 
to you, and after that all’s still again.” 

“ You don’t believe that story, I suppose ? ” 

“Jf you press me very hard,” said the Doctor, “ I must confess, 
with all humility, that I don’t ! ” 

“ No more did I,” said Macdonald, “ till I heard ’em ! ” 

“ Heard them ! ” said the Doctor. 

“Ay, and seen them/’' said the man, stopping and turning 
round. 

“You most agreeable of men ! pray, tell me how.” 

“ Why, you see, last year I was coming down with some wool- 
drays from Parson Dorken’s, and this Cranky Jim was with us, 
and told us the same yarn, and when he had finished, he said, 
‘ You’ll know whether I speak the truth or not to-night, for ivere 
going to camp at the place where it happened.’ 

“ Well, and so we did, and as well as we could reckon, it was 
a little past nine when a curlew got up and began crying. That 
was the signal for the ghosts, and in a minute they were co’eeing 
like mad all round. As Jim had told us, one by one ceased until 
all was quiet, and I thought it was over, when I looked, and saw, 
about a hundred yards off, a tall man in grey crossing a belt of 
open ground. He put his hand to his mouth, gave a wild shout, 
and disappeared ! ” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


371 


‘‘ Thank you,” said the Doctor. “ I think you mentioned that 
your wife’s confinement was somewhat sudden.” 

“ Yes, rather,” replied the man. 

“ Pray, had you been relating any of the chaming little tales to 
her lately — just, we will suppose, to while away the time of the 
evening ? ” 

“Well, I may have done so,” said Macdonald, “but I don’t 
exactly mind.” 

“ Ah, so I thought. The next time your good lady happens to 
be in a similar situation, I think I would refrain from ghost 
stories. I should not like to commit myself to a decided opinion, 
but I should be inclined to say that the tales you have been telling 
me were rather horrible. Is that the light of your hut ? ” 

Two noble collie dogs bounded to welcome them, and a beautiful 
bare-legged girl, about sixteen, ran forth to tell her father, in 
Gaelic, that the trouble was over, and that a boy was born. 

On going in, they found the mother asleep, while her gossip held 
the baby on her knee ; so the Doctor saw that he was not needed, 
and sat down, to w'ait until the woman should wake, having first, 
however, produced from his saddle two bottles of port wine, a 
present from Alice. 

The woman soon woke, and the Doctor, having felt her pulse, 
and left some medicine, started to ride home again, carrying with 
him an incense of good wishes from the warm-hearted Highlanders. 

Instead of looking carefully for the road, the good Doctor was 
soon nine fathoms deep into the reasons why the mountaineers 
and coast folk of aU northern countries should be more blindly 
superstitious than the dwellers in plains and in towns ; and so it 
happened that, coming to a fork in the track, he disregarded the 
advice of his horse, and instead of taking the right hand, as he 
should have done, he held straight on, and, about two o’clock in 
the morning, found that not only had he lost his road, but that the 
track had died out altogether, and that he was completely abroad 
in the bush. 

He was in a very disagreeable predicament. The fog was 
thicker than ever, without a breath of air ; and he knew that it 
was as likely as not that it might last for a day or two. He was 
in a very wild part of the mountain, quite on the borders of all the 
country used by white men. 

After some reflection, he determined to follow the fall of the 
land, thinking that he was still on the water-shed of the Snowy- 
river, and hoping, by following down some creek, to find some place 
he knew. 

Gradually day broke, cold and cheerless, He was wet and 


372 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


miserable, and could merely give a guess at the east, for the sun 
was quite invisible ; but, about eight o’clock, he came on a track, 
running at right angles to the way he had been going, and marked 
with the hoofs of two horses, whose riders had apparently passed 
not many hours before. 

Which way should he go ? He could not determine. The 
horsemen, it seemed to him, as far as he could guess, had been 
going west, while his route lay east. And, after a time, having 
registered a vow never to stir out of sight of the station again 
without a compass, he determined to take a contrary direction 
from them, and to find out where they had come from. 

The road crossed gully after gully, each one like the other. The 
timber was heavy stringy-bark, and, in the lower part of the shallow 
gullies, the tall white stems of the blue gums stood up in the mist 
like ghosts. All nature was dripping and dull, and he was chilled 
and wretched. 

At length, at the bottom of a gully, rather more dreary looking, 
if possible, than all the others, he came on a black reedy water- 
hole, the first he had seen in his ride, and perceived that the 
track turned short to the left. Casting his eye along it, he made 
out the dark indistinct outline of a hut, standing about forty yards 
off. 

He rode up to it. All was as still as death. No man came out 
to welcome him, no dog jumped, barking forth, no smoke went up 
from the chimney ; and, looking round, he saw that the track ended 
here, and that he had ridden all these miles only to find a deserted 
hut. 

But was it deserted ? Not very long so, for those two horse- 
men, whose tracks he had been on so long, had started from here. 
Here, on this bare spot in front of the door, they had mounted. 
One of their horses had been capering ; nay, here were their foot- 
steps on the threshold. And, while he looked, there was a light 
fall inside, and the chimney began smoking. “At all events,” 
said the Doctor, “the fire’s in, and here’s the camp-oven, too. 
Somebody will be here soon. I will go in and light my pipe.” 

He lifted the latch, and went in. Nobody there. Stay — yes, 
there is a man asleep in the bed-place. “ The watchman, prob- 
ably,” thought the Doctor, “ he’s been up all night with the sheep, 
and is taking his rest by day. Well, I won’t wake him ; I’ll hang 
up my horse a bit, and take a pipe. Perhaps I may as well turn 
the horse out. Well, no. I shan’t wait long ; he may stand a 
little without hurting himself.” 

So soliloquised the Doctor, and lit his pipe. A quarter of an 
hour passed, and the man still lay there without moving. The 


GEOFFKY ,HAMLYN. 


373 


'Doctor rose and went close to him. He could not even hear him 
breathe. 

His flesh began to creep, but his brows contracted, and his face 
grew firm. He went boldly up, and pulled down the blanket, and 
then, to his horror and amazement, recognised the distorted coun- 
tenance of the unfortunate William Lee. 

He covered the face over again, and stood thinking of his situa- 
tion, and how this had come to pass. How came Lee here, and 
how had he met his death ? At this moment something bright, 
half hidden by a blue shirt lying on the floor, caught his eye, and, 
going to pick it up, he found it was a beautiful pistol, mounted in 
silver, and richly chased. 

He turned it over and over, till in a lozenge behind the hammer, 
he found, apparently scratched with a knife, the name, “ G. 
Hawker.” 

Here was light with a vengeance ! But he had little time to 
think of his discovery, ere he was startled by the sound of horses’ 
feet rapidly approaching the hut. 

Instinctively he thrust the pistol into his pocket, and stooped 
down, pretending to light his pipe. He heard some one ride up 
to the door, dismount, and enter the hut. He at once turned 
round, pipe in mouth, and confronted him. 

He was a tall, ill-looking, red-haired man, and to the Doctor’s 
pleasant good morning, he replied by sulkily asking what he 
wanted. 

“ Only a light for my pipe, friend,” said the Doctor ; “ having 
got one, I will bid you good morning. Our friend here sleeps well.” 

The new comer was between him and the door, but the Doctor 
advanced boldly. When the two men were opposite their eyes 
met, and they understood one another. 

Moody (for it was he) threw himself upon the Doctor with an 
oath, trying to bear him down ; but, although the taller man, he 
had met his match. He was held in a grasp of iron ; the Doctor’s 
hand was on his collar, and his elbow against his face, and thus 
his head was pressed slowly backwards till he fell to avoid a broken 
neck, and fell, too, with such force that he lay for an instant 
stunned and motionless, and before he came to himself the Doctor 
was on horseback, and some way along the track, glad to have 
made so good an escape from such an awkward customer. 

“ If he had been armed,” said the Doctor, as he rode along, 
“I should have been killed; he evidently came back after that 
pistol. Now, I wonder where I am ? I shall soon know at this 
pace. The little horse keeps up well, seeing he has been out all 
night.” 


374 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


In about two hours he heard a dog bark to the left of the track, 
and, turning off in that direction, he soon found himself in a 
courtyard, and before a door which he thought he recognised : 
the door opened at the sound of his horse, and out walked Tom 
Troubridge. 

“ Good Lord ! ” said the Doctor, “ a friend’s face at last ; tell 
me where I am, for I can’t see the end of the house.” 

“ Why, at our place, Toonarbin, Doctor.” 

“ Weil, take me in, and give me some food ; I have terrible 
tidings for you. When did you last see Lee ? ” 

“ The day before yesterday ; he is up at an outlying hut of ours 
in the ranges.” 

“He is lying murdered in his bed there, for I saw him so not 
three hours past.” 

He then told Troubridge all that had happened. 

“ What sort of a man was it that attacked you ? ” said Trou- 
bridge. 

The Doctor described Moody. 

“ That’s his hut-keeper that he took from herewith him : a man 
he said he knew, and you say he was on horseback. What sort of 
a horse had he ? ” 

“ A good-looking roan, with a new bridle on him.” 

“ Lee’s horse,” said Troubridge ; “ he must have murdered him 
for it. Poor William ! ” 

But when Tom saw the pistol and read the name on it, he 
said, — 

“ Things are coming to a crisis. Doctor ; the net seems closing 
round my unfortunate partner. God grant the storm may come 
and clear the air ! Anything is better than these continual 
alarms.” 

“It will be very terrible when it does come, my dear friend,” 
said the Doctor. 

“ It cannot be much more terrible than this,” said Tom, “ when 
our servants are assassinated in their beds, and travellers in lonely 
huts have to wrestle for their lives. Doctor, did you ever nourish 
a passion for revenge ? ” 

“Yes, once,” said the Doctor, “ and had it gratified in fair and 
open duel ; but when, I saw him lying white on the grass before 
me, and thought that he was dead, I was like one demented, and 
prayed that my life might be taken instead of his. Be sure, Tom, 
that revenge is of the devil, and, like everything else you get from 
him, is not worth having.” 

“ I do not in the least doubt it. Doctor,” said Tom ; “ but oh, 
if I could only have five minutes with him on the turf yonder, with 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


375 


no one to interfere between ns ! I want no weapons ; let us meet 
in our shirts and trowsers, like Devon lads.” 

“ And what would you do to him ? ” 

“ If you weren’t there to see, he'd never tell you.” 

“ Why nourish this feeling, Tom, my old friend ? you do not 
know what pain it gives me to see a noble open character like 
yours distorted like this. Leave him to Desborough, — why should 
you feel so deadly towards the man ? He has injured others more 
than you.” 

“ He stands between me and the hopes of a happy old age. 
He stands between me and the light, and he must stand on one 
side.” 

That night they brought poor Lee’s body down in a dray, and 
buried him in the family burying-ground close beside old Miss 
Thornton. Then the next morning he rode back home to the 
Buckleys’, where he found that family with myself, just arrived 
from the Brentwoods’. I of course was brimful of intelligence, 
but when the Doctor arrived I was thro^vn into the shade at once. 
However, no time was to be lost, and we despatched a messenger, 
post haste, to fetch back Captain Desborough and his troopers, who 
had now been moved off about a week, but had not been as yet 
very far withdrawn, and were examining into some ‘ ‘ black ’ ’ out- 
rages to the northward. 

Mary Hawker was warned, as delicately as possible, that her 
husband was in the neighbourhood. She remained buried in 
thought some time, and then, rousing herself, said, suddenly,— 

“ There must be an end to all this. Get my horse, and let me 
go home.” 

In spite of aU persuasions to the contrary, she stiU said the 
same. 

“ Mrs. Buckley, I wiU go home, and see if I can meet him alone. 
All I ask of you is to keep Charles with you. Don’t let the father 
and son meet, in God’s name.” 

“ But what can you do ? ” urged Mrs. Buckley. 

“ Something, at all events. Find out what he wants. Buy 
him off, perhaps. Pray don’t argue with me. I am quite deter- 
mined.” 

Then it became necessary to tell her of Lee’s death, though the 
fact of his having been murdered was concealed ; but it deeply 
affected her to hear of the loss of her old faithful servant, faithful 
to her at aU events, whatever his faults may have been. Neverthe- 
less, she went off alone, and took up her abode with Troubridge, 
and there they two sat watching in the lonely station, for him who 
was to come. 


376 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


Though they watched together, there was no sympathy or con- 
fidence between them. She never guessed what purpose was in 
Tom’s heart ; she never guessed what made him so pale and 
gloomy, or why he never stirred from the house, but slept half the 
day on the sofa. But ere she had been a week at home, she found 
out. Thus : — 

They would sit, those two, silent and thoughtful, beside that 
unhappy hearth, watching the fire, and brooding over the past. 
Each had that in their hearts which made them silent to one 
another, and each felt the horror of some oveidlowing formless 
calamity, which any instant might take form, and overwhelm them. 
Mary would sit late, dreading the weary night, when her over- 
strained senses caught every sound in the distant forest ; but, 
however late she sat, she always left Tom behind, over the fire, 
not taking his comfortable glass, but gloomily musing — as much 
changed from his old self as man could be. 

She now lay always in her clothes, ready for any emergency ; 
and one night, about a week after Lee’s murder, she dreamt that 
her husband was in the hall, bidding her in a whisper which 
thrilled her heart, to come forth. The fancy was so strong upon 
her, that saying aloud to herself, “ The end is come ! ” she arose 
in a state little short of delirium, and went into the hall. There 
was no one there, but she went to the front door, and, looking out 
into the profoundly black gloom of the night, said in a low voice, — 

“ George, George, come to me ! Let me speak to you, George. 
It will be better for both of us to speak.” 

No answer : but she heard a slight noise in the sitting-room 
behind her, and, opening the door gently, saw a light there, and 
Tom sitting with parted lips watching the door, holding in his hand 
a cocked pistol. 

She was not in the least astonished or alarmed. She was too 
much tete montee to be surprised at anything. She said only, 
with a laugh, — 

“ What ! are you watching, too, old mastiff? — Would you giip 
the wolf, old dog, if he came ? ” 

“Was he there, Mary ? Did you speak to him ? ” 

“No! no!” she said. “A dream, a wandering dream. 
What would you do if he came, — eh, cousin ? ” 

“ Nothing ! nothing ! ” said Tom. “Go to bed.” 

“ Bed, eh? ” she answered. “ Cousin ; shooting is an easier 
death than hanging, — eh ? ” 

Tom felt a creeping at the roots of his hair, as he answered, — 
“ Yes, I believe so.” 

“ Can you shoot straight, old man ? Could you shoot straight 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


377 


and true if he stood there before you ? Ah, you think you could 
now, but your hand would shake when you saw him.” 

“ Go to bed, Mary,” said Tom. “ Don’t talk like that. Let 
the future lie, cousin.” 

She turned and went to her room again. 

All this was told me long after by Tom himself. Tom believed, 
or said he believed, that she was only sounding him, to see what 
his intentions were in case of a meeting with George Hawker. I 
would not for the world have had him suppose I disagreed with 
him ; but I myself take another and darker interpretation of her 
strange words that night. I think that she, never a very strong- 
minded person, and now grown quite desperate from terror, 
actually contemplated her husband’s death with complacency, 
nay, hoped, in her secret heart, that one mad struggle between 
him and Tom might end the matter for ever, and leave her a free 
woman. I may do her injustice, but I think I do not. One 
never knows what a woman of this kind, with strong passions 
and a not over-strong intellect, may be driven to. I knew her for 
forty years, and loved her for twenty. I knew in spite of all her 
selfishness and violence that there were many good, nay, noble 
points in her character ; but I cannot disguise from myself that 
that night’s conversation with Tom showed me a darker point in 
her character than I knew of before. Let us forget it. I would 
wish to have none but kindly recollections of the woman I loved 
so truly and so long. 

For the secret must be told sooner or later, — I loved her before 
any of them. Before James Stockbridge, before George Hawker, 
before Thomas Troubridge, and I loved her more deeply and more 
truly than any of them. But the last remnant of that love 
departed from my heart twenty years ago, and that is why I can 
write of her so calmly now, and that is the reason, too, why I 
remain an old bachelor to this day. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE LAST GLEAM BEFOEE THE STOKM. 

But with us, who were staying down at Major Buckley s, a 
fortnight passed on so pleasantly that the horror of poor Lee s 
murder had begun to wear off, and we were getting once more 
as merry and careless as though we were living in the old 
times of jDrofound peace. Sometimes we would think of poor 


378 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


Mary Hawker, at her lonely watch up at the forest station ; but 
that or any other unpleasant subject was soon driven out of our 
heads by Captain Desborough, who had come back with six 
troopers, declared the country in a state of siege, proclaimed 
martial law, and kept us all laughing and amused from daylight 
to dark. 

Captain Brentwood and his daughter Alice (the transcendently 
beautiful !) had come up, and were staying there. Jim and his 
friend Halbert were still away, but were daily expected. I never 
passed a pleasanter time in my life than during that fortnight’s 
lull between the storms. 

“ Begorra (that’s a Scotch expression. Miss Brentwood, but 
very forcible),” said Captain Desborough. “ I owe you more 
than I can ever repay for buying out the Donovans. That girl 
Lesbia Burke would have forcibly abducted me, and married me 
against my will, if she hadn’t had to follow the rest of the family 
to Port Phillip.” 

‘‘ A fine woman, too,” said Captain Brentwood. 

“ I’d have called her a little coarse, myself,” said Desborough. 

“ One of the finest, strangest sights I ever saw in my life,” 
resumed Captain Brentwood, “ was on the morning I came to 
take possession. None of the family were left but Murtagh 
Donovan and Miss Burke. I rode over from Buckley’s, and when 
I came to the door Donovan took me by the arm, and saying 
‘ whist,’ led me into the sitting-room. There, in front of the 
empty fireplace, crouched down on the floor, bareheaded, with her 
beautiful hair hanging about her shoulders, sat Miss Burke. 
Every now and then she would utter the strangest low wailing 
cry you ever heard : a cry, by Jove, sir, that went straight to your 
heart. I turned to Donovan, and whispered, ‘ Is she ill ? ’ and 
he whispered again, ‘ Her heart’s broke at leaving the old place 
where she’s lived so long. She's raising the keen over the cold 
hearthstone. It’s the way of the Burkes.’ I don’t know when 
I was so affected in my life. Somehow, that exquisite line came 
to my remembrance, — 

‘ And the hare shall kindle on the cold hearthstone, 

and I went back quietly with Donovan ; and, by Jove, sir, when 
we came out the great ass had the tears running down his cheeks. 
I have always felt kindly to that man since.” 

‘'Ah, Captain,” said Desborough, “with all our vanity and 
absurdity, we Irish have good warm hearts under our waistcoats. 
We are the first nation in the world, sir, saving the Jews.” 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


379 


This was late in the afternoon of a temperate spring day. We 
were watching Deshorough as he was giving the finishing touches 
to a beautiful water-colour drawing. 

“ Doctor,” he said, “ come and pass your opinion.” 

“ I think you have done admirably. Captain,” said the Doctor ; 
“ you have given one a splendid idea of distance in the way you 
have toned do’WTi the plain, from the grey appearance it has ten 
miles off to the rich, delicate green it shows close to us. And 
your mountain, too, is most aerial. You would make an artist.” 

“ I am not altogether displeased with my work. Doctor, if you, 
w^ho never flatter, can praise it with the original before you. 
How exceedingly beautiful the evening tones are becoming ! ” 

We looked across the plain ; the stretch of grass I have 
described was lying before one like a waveless sea, from the 
horizon of wdiich rose the square abrupt- sided mass of basalt 
w’hich years ago we had named the Organ-hill, from the regular 
fluted columns of which it was composed. On most occasions, as 
seen from Major Buckley’s, it appeared a dim mass of pearly grey, 
but to-night, in the clear frosty air, it was of a rich purple, 
shining on the most prominent angles with a dull golden light. 

“ The more I look at that noble fire-temple, the more I admire 
it,” said the Doctor. “It is one of the most majestic objects I 
ever beheld.” 

“ It is not unlike Stafia,” said Deshorough. “ There come two 
travellers.” 

Two dots appeared crawling over the plain, and making for the 
river. For a few minutes Alice could not be brought to see them, 
but when she did, she declared that it was Jim and Halbert. 

“ You have good eyes, my love,” said her father, “ to see what 
does not exist. Jim’s horse is black, and Halbert’s roan, and 
those tw'o men are both on grey horses.” 

“ The wish was parent to the thought, father,” she replied, 
laughing. “I wonder wdiat is keeping him away from us so 
long ? If he is to go to India, I should like to see him as much 
as jDOSsible.” 

“ My dear,” said her father, “ wdien he went off with Halbert 
to see the Markhams, I told him that if he liked to go on to 
Sydney, he could go if Halbert went with him, and draw on the 
agent for what money he wanted. By his being so long away, I 
conclude he has done so, and that he is probably at this moment 
getting a lesson at billiards from Halbert before going to dinner. 
I shall have a nice little account from the agent just now, of 
Cash advanced to J. Brentwood, Esq.’ ” 

“ I don’t think Jim’s extravagant, papa,” said Alice. 


380 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“My dear,” said Captain Brentwood, “you do him injustice. 
He hasn’t had the chance. I must say, considering his limited 
opportunities, he has spent as much money on horses, saddleiy, &c., 
as any young gentleman on this country side. Eh, Sam ? ” 

“Well, sir,” said Sam, “Jim spends his money, but he 
generally makes pretty good investments in the horse line.” 

“ Such as that sweet-tempered useful animal Stampedo,” replied 
the Captain, laughing, “ who nearly killed a groom, and staked 
himself tiying to leap out of the stockyard the second day he had 
him. Well, never mind ; Jim’s a good hoy, and I am proud of 
him. I am in some hopes that this Sydney journey will satisfy his 
wandering propensities for the present, and that we may keep him 
at home. I wish he would fall in love with somebody, providing 
she wasn’t old enough to be his grandmother. — Couldn’t you send 
him a letter of introduction to some of your old schoolfellows. Miss 
Puss ? There was one of them, I remember, I fell in love with 
myself one time when I came to see you ; Miss Green, I think it 
was. She was very nearly being your mamma-in-law, my dear.” 

“ Why, she is a year younger than me,” said Alice, “ and, oh 
goodness, such a temper ! She threw the selections from 
Beethoven at Signor Smitherini, and had bread and water-melon 
for two days for it. Serve her right ! ” 

“ I have had a narrow escape, then,” replied the father. “ But 
we shall see who these two people are immediately, for they are 
crossing the river.” 

When the two travellers rose again in sight on the near hank of 
the river, one of them was seen galloping forward waving his 
hat. 

“ I knew it was Jim,” said Alice, “ and on a new gi’ey horse. 
I thought he would not go to Sydney.” And in a minute more 
she had run to meet him, and Jim was off his horse, kissing his 
sister, laughing, shouting, and dancing around her. 

“Well, father,” he said, “here I am back again. Went to 
Sydney and stayed a week, when we met the two Marstons, and 
went right up to the Clarence with them. That was a pretty 
journey, eh ? Sold the old horse, and bought this one. I’ve 
got heaps to tell you, sister, about what I’ve seen. I went home, 
and only stayed ten minutes ; when I heard you were here, I came 
right on.” 

“ I am glad to see you back, Mr. Halbert,” said Major Buckley. 
“ I hope you have had a pleasant journey. You have met Captain 
Desborough ? ” 

“ Captain Desborough, how are you ? ” says Jim. “I am very 
glad to see you. But between you and I, you’re always a bird of 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


881 


ill omen. Whose pig’s dead now ? What brings you back ? I 
thought we should he rid of you by this time.” 

“ But you are not rid of me, Jackanapes,” said Desborough, 
laughing. “But I’U tell you what, Jim ; there is reaUy some- 
thing wrong, my boy, and I’m glad to see you back.” And he 
told him aU the news. 

Jim grew very serious. “Well,” said he, “I’m glad to he 
home again ; and I’m glad, too, to see you here. One feels safer 
when you’re in the way. We must put a cheerful face on the 
matter, and not frighten the women. I have bought such a 
beautiful brace of pistols in Sydney. I hope I may never have 
the chance to use them in this country. Why, there’s Cecil 
Mayford and Mrs. Buckley coming down the garden, and Charley 
Hawker, too. Why, Major, you’ve got all the world here to 
welcome us.” 

The young men were soon busy discussing the merits of Jim’s 
new horse, and examining with great admiration his splendid new 
pistols. Charley Hawker, poor boy ! made a mental resolution 
to go to Sydney, and also come back with a new grey horse, and a 
pair of pistols more resplendent than Jim’s. And then they went 
in to get ready for dinner. 

When Jim unpacked his valise, he produced a pretty bracelet 
for his sister, and a stockwhip for Sam. On the latter article he 
was very eloquent. 

“ Sam, my boy,” said he, “there is not such another in the 
country. It was made by the celebrated Bill Mossman of the 
Upper Hunter, the greatest swearer at bullocks, and the most 
accomplished whipmaker on the Sydney side. He makes only 
one in six months, and he makes it a favour to let you have it for 
five pounds. You can take a piece of bark off a blue gum, big 
enough for a canoe, with one cut of it. There’s a fine of two 
pounds for cracking one within a mile of Government House, they 
make such a row. A man the other day cracked one of them on 
the South Head, and broke the windows in Pitt Street.” 

“ You’re improving. Master Jim,” said Charles Hawker. 
“ You’ll soon be as good a hand at a yam as Hamlyn’s Dick.” 
At the same time he wrote down a stockwhip, similar to this one, 
on the tablets of his memory, to be procured on his projected visit 
to Sydney. 

That evening we all sat listening to Jim’s adventures ; and 
pleasantly enough he told them, with not a little humorous 
exaggeration. It is always pleasant to hear a young fellow tell- 
ing his first impressions of new things and scenes, which have 
been so long familiar to ourselves, but Jim had really a very good 


382 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


power of narration, and he kept us laughing and amused till long 
after the usual hour for going to bed. 

Next day we had a pleasant ride, all of us, down the banks of 
the river. The weather was slightly frosty, and the air clear and 
elastic. As we followed the windings of the noble rushing stream, 
at a height of seldom less than three hundred feet above his bed, 
the Doctor was busy pointing out the alternations of primitive 
sandstone and slate, and the great streams of volcanic bluestone 
which had poured from various points towards the deep glen in 
which the river flowed. Here, he would tell us, was formerly a 
lofty cascade, and a lake above it, but the river had worn through 
the sandstone bar, drained the lake, leaving nothing of tlie water- 
fall but two lofty cliifs, and a rapid. There again had come down 
a lava-stream from Mirngish, which, cooled by the waters of the 
river, had stopped, and, accumulating, formed the lofty over- 
hanging cliff on which we stood. He showed us how the fern- 
trees grew only in the still sheltered elbows facing northward, 
where the sun raised a warm steam from the river, and the cold- 
south wind could not penetrate. He gathered for Mrs. Buckley a 
bouquet of the tender sweet-scented yellow oxalis, the winter flower 
of Australia, and showed us the copper-lizard basking on the red 
rocks, so like the stone on which he lay, that one could scarce 
see him till a metallic gleam betrayed him, as he slipped to his 
lair. And we, the elder of the party, who followed the Doctor’s 
handsome little brovm mare, kept our ears open, and spoke little, 
— but gave ourselves fully up to the enjoyment of his learning 
and eloquence. 

But the Doctor did not absorb the whole party ; far from it. 
He had a rival. All the young men, and Miss Alice besides, 
were grouped round Captain Deslaorough. Frequently we elders, 
deep in some Old World history of the Doctor’s, would be dis- 
turbed by a ringing peal of laughter from the other party, and 
then the Doctor would laugh, and we would all join ; not that we 
had heard the joke, but from sheer sympathy with the hilarity of 
the young folks. Desborough was making himself agreeable, and 
who could do it better ? He was telling the most outrageous of 
Irish stories, and making, on purpose, the most outrageous of 
Irish bulls. After a shout of laughter louder than the rest, the 
Doctor remarked, — 

“ That’s better for them than geology, — eh, Mrs. Buckley ? ” 

“And so my grandmother,” we heard Desborough say, “ waxed 
mighty wrath, and she up with her gold-headed walking-stick in 
the middle of Sackville Street, and says she, ‘ Ye villain, do ye 
think I don’t know my own Blenheim spannel when I see him ? ’ 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


383 


‘Indeed, my lady,’ says Mike, ‘ ’twas himself toidd me lie belanged 
to Barney.’ ‘ Who tould you?’ says she. ‘The dog himself 
tould me, my lady.’ ‘ Ye thief of the world,’ says my aunt, ‘ and 
ye’d believe a dog before a dowager countess ? Give him up, ye 
villain, this minute, or I’ll hit ye ! ’ ” 

These were the sort of stories Deshorough delighted in, making 
them up, he often confessed, as he went on. On this occasion, 
when he had done his story, they all rode up and joined us, and 
we stood admiring the river, stretching westward in pools of gold 
between black clifis, toward the setting sun ; then we turned home- 
ward. 

That evening Alice said, “ Now do tell me. Captain Des- 
horough, was that a true stoiy about Lady CovetoiMi’s dog ? ” 

“ True! ” said he. “ What story worth hearing ever was true? 
The old lady lost her dog certainly, and claimed him of a dog- 
stealer in Sackville Street ; but all the rest, my dear young lady, 
is historic romance.” 

“Mr. Hamlyn knows a good story,” said Charley Hawker, 
“ about Bougong Jack. Do tell it to iis. Uncle Jeff.” 

“I don’t think,” I said, “that it has so much foundation in 
fact as Captain Desborough’s. But there must he some sort of 
truth in it, for it comes from the old hands, and shows a little 
more sign of imagination than you would expect from them. It 
is a very stupid stoiy too.” 

“ Do tell it,” they all said. So I comiilied, much in the same 
language as I tell it now : — 

You know that these great snow-ranges which tower up to the 
west of us are, farther south, of great breadth, and that none 
have yet forced their way from the country of the Ovens and the 
Mitta Mitta through here to Gipp’s-land. 

The settlers who have just taken up that country trying to 
penetrate to the eastward here towards us, find themselves stopped 
by a mighty granite wall. Any adventurous men, who may top 
that harrier, see nothing before them but range beyond range of 
snow Alps, intersected by precipitous cliffs, and frightful 
chasms. 

This westward range is called the Bougongs. The blacks during 
summer are in the habit of coming thus far to collect and feed 
on the great grey moths (Bougongs) which are found on the rocks. 
They used to report that a fine available country lies to the east 
embosomed in mountains, rendered fertile by perpetual snow-fed 
streams. This is the more credible, as it is evident that between 
the Bougong range on the west and the Warragong range on the 


384 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


extreme east, towards us, there is a breadth of at least eighty 
miles. 

There lived a few years ago, not veiy far from the Ovens-river, a 
curious character, by name John Sampson. He had been educated 
at one of the great English universities, and was a good scholar, 
though he had been forced to leave the university, and, as report 
went, England too, for some great in'egularity. 

He had money, and a share in his brother-in-law’s station, 
although he never stayed there many months in the year. He 
was always away at some mischief or another. No horse-race or 
prize-fight could go on without him, and he himself never left one 
of these last-mentioned gatherings without finding some one to 
try conclusions with him. Beside this, he was a great writer and 
singer of comic songs, and a consummate horseman. 

One fine day he came back to his brother’s station in serious 
trouble. Whether he had mistaken another man’s horse for his 
own or not, I cannot say ; but, at all events, he amiounced that a 
warrant was out against him for horse -stealing, and that he must 
go into hiding. So he took up his quarters at a little hut of his 
brother-in-law’s, on the ranges, inhabited only by a stock-keener 
and a black boy, and kept a young lubra in pay to watch down the 
glen for the police. i ^ 

One morning she came running into the hut, breathless^ to say 
that a lieutenant and three troopers were riding towards the huk 
Jack had just time to saddle and mount his horse before, the 
police caught sight of him, and started after him at full speed. 

They hunted him into a narrow glen ; a single cattle-track, not 
a foot broad, led on between a swollen rocky creek, utterly impas- 
sable by horse or man, and a lofty precipice of loose broken slate, 
on which one would have thought a goat could not have found a 
footing. The young police lieutenant had done his work well, 
and sent a trooper round to head him, so that Jack found himself 
between the devil and the deep sea. A tall armed trooper stood 
in front of him, behind was the lieutenant, on the right the creek, 
and on the left the precipice. 

They called out to him to surrender ; but, giving one look 
before and behind, and seeing escape was hopeless, he hesitated 
not a moment, but put his horse at the cliff, and clambered up, 
rolling doAvn tons of loose slate in his course. The lieutenant 
shut his eyes, expecting to see horse and man roll down into 
the creek, and only opened them in time to see Jack stand for a 
moment on the summit against the sky, and then disappear. 

He disappeared over the top of the cliff, and so he was lost to 
the ken of white men for the space of four years. His sister and 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


385 


brother-in-law mourned for him as dead, and mourned sincerely, 
for they and all who knew him liked him well. But at the end 
of that time, on a wild winter’s night, he came back to them, 
dressed in opossum skins, with scarce a vestige of European 
clothing about him. His beard had grown down over his chest, 
and he had nearly forgotten his mother tongue, but, when speech 
came to him again, he told them a strange story. 

It was winter time when he rode away. All the table lands 
were deep with snow ; and, when he had escaped the policemen, 
he had crossed the first of the great ridges on the same night. 
He camped in the valley he had found on the other side ; and, 
having his gun and some ammunition with him, he fared well. 

He was beyond the country which had ever been trodden by 
white men, and now, for the mere sake of adventure, he deter- 
mined to go further still, and see if he could cross the great White 
Mountains, which had hitherto been considered an insurmountable 
barrier. 

For two days he rode over a high table-land, deep in snow. 
Here and there, in a shallow sheltered vaUey, he would find just 
grass enough to keep his horse alive, but nothing for himself. 
On the third night he saw before him another snow-ridge, too far 
off to reach without rest, and, tethering his horse in a little crevice, 
between the rocks, he prepared to walk to and fro all night, to 
keep off the deadly snow sleepiness that he felt coming over him. 
“ Let me but see what is beyond that next ridge,” he said, “ and 
I will lie down and die.” ' - 

And now, as the stillness of the night came on, and the Southern 
Cross began to twinkle brilliantly above the blinding snow, he was 
startled once more by a sound which had fallen on his ear several 
times during his toilsome afternoon journey : a sound as of a 
sudden explosion, mingled, strangely too, with the splintering of 
broken glass. At first he thought it was merely the booming in 
his ears, or the rupture of some vessel in his bursting head. Or 
was it fancy ^ No ; there it was a^in, clearer than before. That 
was no noise in his head, for the patient horse turned and looked 
toward the place' where the sound came from. Thunder ? The 
air was clear and frosty, and not a cloud stained the sky. There 
was some mystery beyond that snow-ridge worth living to see. 

^ He lived to see it. For, an hour after daybreak next morning, 
he, leading his horse, stumbled over the snow-covered rocks that 
T)Ounded his view,, and, when he reached the top, there burst on 
his sight a scene that made him throw up his arms and shout 
aloud. 

Before him, pinnacle after pinnacle, towered up a mighty Alp, 

26 


386 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


blazing in the morning sun. Down through a black rift on its 
side, wound a gleaming glacier, which hurled its shattered ice 
crystals over a dark cliff, into the deep profound blue of a lake, 
which stretched north and south, studded with green woody islets, 
almost as far as the eye could see. Toward the mountain the lake 
looked deep and gloomy, but, on the other side, showed many a 
pleasant yellow shallow, and sandy bay, while between him and 
the lake lay a mile or so of park-like meadow-land, in the full 
verdure of winter. As he looked, a vast dislocated mass of ice 
fell crashing from the glacier into the lake, and solved at once the 
mystery of the noises he had heard the night before. 

He descended into the happy valley, and found a small tribe of 
friendly blacks, who had never before seen the face of white man, 
and who supposed him to be one of their own tribe, dead long ago, 
who had come back to them, renovated and beautified, from the 
other world. With these he lived a pleasant slothful life, while 
four years went on, forgetting all the outside world, till his horse 
was dead, his gun rusted and thrown aside, and his European 
clothes long since replaced by the skin of the opossum and the 
koala. He had forgotten his o\mi tongue, and had given up all 
thoughts of crossing again the desolate barriers of snow which 
divided him from civilization, when a slight incident brought 
back old associations to his mind, and roused him from 
sleep. 

In some hunting excursion he got a slight scratch, and, searching 
for some linen to tie it up, found in his mi-mi an old waistcoat, 
which he had worn when he came into the valley. In the lining, 
while tearing it up, he found a crumpled paper, a note from his 
sister, written years before, full of sisterly kindness and tenderness. 
He read it again and again before he laid domi, and the next 
morning, collecting such small stock of provisions as he could, he 
started on the homeward track, and after incredible hardships 
reached his station. 

His brother-in-law tried in vain with a strong party to reach the 
lake, but never succeeded. What mountain it was he discovered, 
or what river is fed by the lake he lived on, no man knows to this 
day. Some say he went mad, and lived in the ranges all the 
time, and that this was al a mere madman’s fancy. But, whether 
he was mad or not then, he is sane enough now, and has married 
a wife, and settled down to be one of the most thriving men in 
that part of the country.* 

* This legend is said to be among the “ Archives ” of one of our best 
North Border families. It is but little altered, since the author heard it 
narrated at a camp-fire, one night, in the western Port Phillip country. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


387 


‘‘Well,” said the Doctor, thrusting his fists deep into his 
breeches pockets, “ I don’t believe that story.” 

“Nor I either. Doctor,” I replied. “ But it has amused you all 
for half an hour ; so let it pass.” 

“ Oh ! ” said the Doctor, rather peevishly, “if you put it on 
those grounds, I am bound, of course, to withhold a few little 
criticisms I was inclined to make on its probability. I hope you 
won’t go and pass it ofi' as authentic, you know, because if we 
once begin to entertain these sort of legends as meaning anything, 
the whole history of the country becomes one great fog-bank, 
through which the devil himself could not find his way.” 

“Now, for my part,” said mischievous Alice, “I think it a 
very pretty stoiy. And I have no doubt that it is every word of 
it true.” 

“Oh, dear me, then,” said the Doctor, “let us vote it true. 
And, while we are about it, let us believe that the Sydney ghost 
actually did sit on a three -rail fence, smoking its pipe, and 
directing an anxious crowd of relatives where to find its body. 
By all means let us believe everything we hear.” 

The next morning our pleasant party suffered a loss. Captain 
Brentwood and Alice went off home. He was wanted there, and 
all things seemed so tranquil that he thought it was foolish to 
stay away any longer. Cecil Mayford, too, departed, carrying 
with him the affectionate farewells of the whole party. His plea- 
sant even temper, and his handsome face, had won every one who 
knew him, and, though he never talked much, yet, when he was 
gone, we all missed his merry laugh, after one of Desborough’s 
good stories. Charley Hawker went oft‘ with him, too, and spent 
a few hours with Ellen Mayford, much to his satisfaction, but 
came in again at night, as his mother had prayed of him not to 
leave the Major’s till he had seen her again. 

That night, the Major proposed punch, and, after Mrs. Buckley 
had gone to bed, Sam sang a song, and Desborough told a story, 
about a gamekeeper of his uncle’s, whom the old gentleman desired 
to start in an independent way of business. So he built him a 
new house, and gave him a keg of whiskey, to start in the spirit- 
selling line. “But the first night,” said Desborough, “the 
villain finished the whiskey himself, broke the keg, and burnt the 
house down ; so my uncle had to take him back into service again 
after all.” And after this came other stories, equally preposterous, 
and we went rather late to bed. 

And the next morning, too, I am afraid, we were rather late 
for breakfast. Just as we were sitting down, in came Captain 
Brentwood. 


388 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ Hallo,” said the Major ; what brings you back so soon, old 
friend. Nothing the matter, I hope ? ” 

“ Nothing but business,” he replied. “I am going on to 
Dickson’s, and I shall be back home to-night, I hope. I am glad 
to find you so late, as I have had no breakfast, and have ridden 
ten miles.” 

He took breakfast with us and went on. The morning passed 
somewhat heavily, as a morning is apt to do, after sitting up late 
and drinking punch. Towards noon Desborough said, — 

“ Now, if anybody will confess that he drank just three drops 
too much punch last night, I will do the same. Mrs. Buckley, 
my dear lady, I hope you will order plenty of pale ale for lunch.” 

Lunch passed pleasantly enough, and afterwards the Major, 
telling Sam to move a table outside into the verandah, dis- 
appeared, and soon came back with a very “curious” bottle of 
Madeira. We sat then in the verandah smoking for about a 
quarter of an hour. 

I remember every word that was spoken, and every trivial 
circumstance that happened during that quarter of an hour ; they 
are burnt into my memory as if by fire. The Doctor was raving 
about English poetry, as usual, saying, however, that the modern 
English poets, good as they were, had lost the power of melody a 
good deal. This the Major denied, quoting : — 

“ By torch and trumpet fast array’d.” 

“Fifty such lines, sir, are not worth one of Milton’s,” said 
the Doctor. 


“ ‘ The trumpet spake not to the armed throng.’ 

There’s melody for you ; there’s a blare and a clang ; there’s 
a ” 

I heard no more. Mrs. Buckley’s French clock, in the house 
behind, chimed three quarters past one, and I heard a sound of 
two persons coming quickly through the house. 

Can you tell the step of him who brings evil tidings ? I think 
I can. At all events, I felt my heart grow cold when I heard 
those footsteps. I heard them coming through the house, across 
the boarded floor. The one was a rapid, firm, military footstep, 
accompanied with the clicking of a spur, and the other was un- 
mistakably the “ pad, pad ” of a black-fellow. 

We all turned round and looked at the door. There stood the 
sergeant of Desborough’s troopers, pale aiid silent, and close 


GEOFFRY HA.MLYN. 


889 


behind him, clinging to him as if for protection, was the lithe 
naked figure of a black lad, looking from behind the sergeant, 
with terrified visage, first at one and then at another of us. 

I saw disaster in their faces, and Avould have held up my hand 
to warn him not to speak before Mrs. Buckley. But I was too 
late, for he had spoken. And then we sat for a minute, looking 
at one another, each man seeing the reflection of his own horror 
in his neighbour’s eyes. 


CHAPTER XL. 

THE STORM BURSTS. 

Poor little Cecil Mayford had left us about nine o’clock in the 
morning of the day before this, and, accompanied by Charles 
Hawker, reached his mother’s station about eleven o’clock in the 
day. 

All the way Charles had talked incessantly of Ellen, and Cecil 
joined in Charles’s praises of his sister, and joked with him for 
being “ awfully spooney ” about her. 

“ You’re worse about my sister, Charley,” said he, “ than old 
Sam is about Miss Brentwood. He takes things quiet enough, 
but if you go on in this style till you are old enough to marry, by 
Jove, there’ll be nothing of you left ! ” 

“ I wonder if she would have me ? ” said Charles, not heeding 
him. 

“The best thing you can do is to ask her,” said Cecil. “I 
think I know what she would say, though.” 

They reached Mrs. Mayford’s, and spent a few pleasant hours 
together. Charles started home again about three o’clock, and 
having gone a little way, turned to look back. The brother and 
sister stood at the house-door still. He waved his hand in fare- 
well to them, and they replied. Then he rode on and saw them 
no more. 

Cecil and Ellen went into the house to their mother. The 
women worked, and Cecil read aloud to them. The book was 
“ Waverley ; ” I saw it afterwards, and when supper was over he 
took it up to begin reading again. 

“ Not that book to-night, my boy,” said his mother. “ Read 
us a chapter out of the Bible. I am very low in my mind, and at 
such times I like to hear the Word.” 

He read the good book to them till quite late. Both he and 


390 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


Ellen thought it strange that their mother should insist on that 
book on a week-night ; they never usually read it, save on Sunday 
evenings. 

The morning broke bright and frosty. Cecil was abroad be- 
times, and went down the paddock to fetch the horses. He put 
them in the stock-yard, and stood for a time close to the stable, 
talking to a tame black lad, that they employed about the place. 

His attention was attracted by a noise of horses’ feet. He 
looked up and saw about a dozen men riding swiftly and silently 
across the paddock towards the house. 

For an instant he seems to have idly wondered who they were, 
and have had time to notice a thickset gaudily dressed man, who 
rode in front of the others, when the kitchen-door was thrown 
suddenly open, and the old hut-keeper, with his grey hair waving 
in the wind, run out, crying, — “ Save yourself, in God’s name. 
Master Cecil. The Bushrangers ! ” 

Cecil raised his clenched hands in wild despair. They were 
caught like birds in a trap. No hope ! — no escape ! Nothing 
left for it now, but to die red-handed. He dashed into the house 
with the old hut-keeper and shut the door. 

The black lad ran up to a little rocky knoll within two hundred 
yards of the house, and, hiding himself, watched what went on. 
He saw the bushrangers ride up to the door and dismount. Then 
they began to beat the door and demand admittance. Then 
the door was burst down, and one of them fell dead by 
a pistol-shot. Then they rushed in tumultuously, leaving one 
outside to mind the horses . Then the terrified hoy heard the 
dull sound of shots fired rapidly inside the building (pray that you 
may never hear that noise, reader : it always means mischief), 
and then all was comparatively still for a time. 

Then there began to arise a wild sound of brutal riot within, 
and after a time they poured out again, and mounting, rode away. 

Then the black boy slipt down from his lair like a snake, and 
stole towards the house. All was still as death. The door was 
open, but, poor little savage as he was, he dared not enter. 
Once he thought he heard a movement within, and listened 
intently with all his faculties, as only a savage can listen, but all 
was still again. And then gathering courage, he went in. 

In the entrance, stepping over the body of the dead bushranger, 
he found the poor old white-headed hut-keeper knocked dovm and 
killed in the first rush. He went on into the parlour ; and there, 
— oh, lamentable sight ! — was Cecil ; clever, handsome little Cecil, 
our old favourite, lying across the sofa, shot through the heart, 
dead. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


391 


But not alone. No ; prone along the floor, covering six feet or 
more of ground, lay the hideous corpse of Moody, the cannibal. 
The red-headed miscreant, who had murdered poor Lee, under 
George Hawker’s directions. 

I think the poor black hoy w'ould have felt in his dumb darkened 
heart some sorrow at seeing his kind old master so cruelly 
murdered. Perhaps he would have raised the death-cry of his 
tribe over him, and burnt himself with fire, as their custom is ; 
but he was too terrified at seeing so many of the lordly white 
race prostrated by one another’s hands. He stood and trembled, 
and then, almost in a whisper, began to call for Mrs. Mayford. 

“ Missis ; ” he said, “ Miss Ellen ! All pull away, bushranger 
chaps. Make a light, good Missis. Plenty frightened this 
fellow.” 

No answer. No sign of Mrs. Mayford or Ellen. They must 
have escaped then. We will try to hope so. The black hoy 
peered into one chamber after another, hut saw no signs of them, 
only the stillness of death over all. 

Let us leave this accursed house, lest prying too closely, we 
may find crouching in some dark comer a Gorgon, who will freeze 
us into stone. 

* -;c- * -jc- -If * 

The black lad stripped himself naked as he was born, and 
running like a deer, sped to Major Buckley’s before the south 
wind, across the plain. There he found the Sergeant, and told 
him his tale, and the Sergeant and he broke in on us with the 
terrible news as we were sitting merrily over our wine. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

WIDDERIN SHOWS CLEARLY THAT HE IS WORTH ALL THE MONEY 
SAM GAVE FOR HIM. 

The Sergeant, as I said, broke in upon us with the fearful news 
as we sat at wine. For a minute no man spoke, but all sat silent 
and horror-struck. Only the Doctor rose quietly, and slipped out 
of the room unnoticed. 

Desborough spoke first. He rose up with deadly wrath in his 
face, and swore a fearful oath, an oath so fearful, that he who 
endorsed every word of it then, will not write it down now. To 
the effect “ That, he would take neither meat, nor drink, nor 


392 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


pleasure, nor rest, beyond what was necessary to keep body and 
soul together, before he had purged the land of these treacherous 
villains ! ” 

Charles Hawker went up to the Sergeant, with a livid face and 
shaking hands ; “ Will you tell me again, Robinson, are they all 
deadr' 

The Sergeant looked at him compassionately. “Well, sir,” 
he said; “the boy seemed to think Mrs. and Miss Mayford had 
escaped. But you mustn’t trust what he says, sir.” 

“You are deceiving me,” said Charles. “There is something you 
are hiding from me. I shall go down there this minute and see.” 

“You will do nothing of the kind, sir,” said Mrs. Buckley, 
coming into the doorway and confronting him; “your place is 
with Captain Desborough. I am going down to look after Ellen.” 

During these few moments, Sam had stood stupefied. He 
stepped up to the Sergeant, and said, — 

“ Would you tell me which way they went from the 
Mayfords’ ? ” 

“ Down the river, sir.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Sam ; “ towards Captain Brentwood’s, and Alice 
at home, and alone I — There may be time yet.” 

He ran out of the room and I after him. “ His first trouble,” 
I thought, — “ his first trial. How will our boy behave now ? ” 

Let me mention again that the distance from the Mayfords’ to 
Captain Brentwood’s, following the windings of the river on its 
right bank, was nearly twenty miles. From Major Buckley’s to 
the same point, across the plains, was barely ten ; so that there 
was still a chance that a brave man on a good horse, might reach 
Captain Brentwood’s before the bushrangers, in spite of the start 
they had got. 

Sam’s noble horse, Widderin, a horse with a pedigree a 
hundred years old, stood in the stable. The buying of that horse 
had been Sam’s only extravagance, for which he had often re- 
proached himself, and now this day, he would see whether he 
would get his money’s worth out of that horse, or no. 

I followed him up to the stable, and found him putting the 
bridle on Widderin’s beautiful little head. Neither of us spoke, 
only when I handed him the saddle, and helped him with the 
girths, he said, “ God bless you.” 

I ran out and got down the slip-rails for him. As he rode by 
he said, “ Good-bye, Uncle Jeff, perhaps you won’t see me 
again ; ” and I cried out, “ Remember your God and your 
mother, Sam, and don’t do anything foolish.” 

Then he was gone ; and looking across the plains the way he 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


393 


should go, I saw another horseman toiling far away, and recog- 
nised Doctor Mulhaus. Good Doctor ! he had seen the danger 
in a moment, and by his ready wit had got a start of every one 
else hy ten minutes. 

The Doctor, on his handsome long-bodied Arabian mare, was 
making good work of it across the plains, when he heard the rush 
of horses’ feet behind him, and turning, he saw tall Widderin 
bestridden by Sam, springing over the turf, gaining on him stride 
after stride. In a few minutes they were alongside of one 
another. 

“ Good lad ! ” cried the Doctor ; “ On, forwards ; catch her, 
and away to the woods with her. Bloodhound Deshorough will be 
on their trail in half-an-hour. Save her, and we will have noble 
vengeance.” 

Sam only waved his hand in good-bye, and sped on across the 
plain like a solitary ship at sea. He steered for a single tree, 
now becoming dimly visible, at the foot of the Organ hill. 

The good horse, with elastic and easy motion, fled on his course 
like a bird ; lifting his feet clearly and rapidly through the grass. 
The brisk south wind filled his wide nostrils as he turned his 
graceful neck from side to side, till, finding that work was meant, 
and not play, he began to hold his head straight before him, and 
rush steadily forward. 

And Sam, poor Sam ! all his hopes for life are now brought 
down to this : to depend on the wind and pluck of an unconscious 
horse. One stumble now, and it were better to lie down on the 
plain and die. He was in the hands of God, and he felt it. He 
said one short prayer, hut that towards the end was interrupted 
by the wild current of his thoughts. 

Was there any hope ? They, the devils, would have been 
drinking at the Mayfords’, and perhaps would go slow ; or would 
they ride fast and wild ? After thinking a short time, he feared 
the latter. They had tasted blood, and knew that the country 
would he roused on them shortly. On, on, good horse ! 

The lonely shepherd on the plains, sleepily watching his feeding 
sheep, looked up as Sam went speeding by, and thought how fine 
a thing it would be to he dressed like that, and have nothing to do 
but to ride blood-horses to death. Mind your sheep, good 
shepherd ; perhaps it were better for you to do that and nothing 
more all your life, than to carry in your breast for one short hour 
such a volcano of rage, indignation and terror, as he does who 
hurries unheeding through your scattered flock. 

Here are a brace of good pistols, and they, with care, shall give 
account, if need be, of two men. After that, nothing. It were 


394 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


better, so much better, not to live if one were only ten minutes too 
late. The Doctor would be up soon ; not much matter if he were, 
though, only another life gone. 

The Organ hill, a cloud of misty blue when he started, now 
hung in aerial fluted cliffs above his head. As he raced across 
the long glacis which lay below the hill, he could see a solitary 
eagle wheeling round the topmost pinnacles, against the clear 
blue sky ; then the hill was behind him, and before him another 
stretch of plain, bounded by timber, which marked the course of 
the river. 

Brave Widderin had his ears back now, and was throwing his 
breath regularly through his nostrils in deep sighs. Good horse, 
only a little longer ; bear thyself bravely this day, and then plea- 
sant pastures for thee till thou shalt go the way of all horses. 
Many a time has she patted, with kind words, thy rainbow neck, 
my horse ; help us to save her now. 

Alas ! good willing brute, he cannot understand ; only he knows 
that his kind master is on his back, and so he will run till he 
drop. Good Widderin ! think of the time when thy sire rushed 
triumphant through the shouting thousands at Epsom, and all 
England heard that Arcturus had won the Derby. Think of the 
time when thy grandam, carrying Sheik Abdullah, bore down in a 
whirlwind of sand on the toiling affrighted caravan. Ah ! thou 
knowest not of these things, but yet thy speed flags not. We are 
not far off now, good horse, we shall know all soon. 

Now he was in the forest again, and now, as he rode quickly 
down the steep sandy road among the bracken, he heard the 
hoarse rush of the river in his ears, and knew the end was well- 
nigh come. 

No drink now, good Widderin ! a bucket of champagne in an 
hour’s time, if thou wilt only stay not now to bend thy neck down 
to the clear gleaming water ; flounder through the ford, and just 
twenty yards up the bank by the cherry-tree, we shall catch sight 
of the house, and know our fate. 

Now the house was in sight, and now he cried aloud some wild 
inarticulate sound of thankfulness and joy. All was as peaceful as 
ever, and Alice, unconscious, stood white-robed in the verandah, 
feeding her birds. 

As he rode up he shouted out to her and beckoned. She came 
running through the house, and met him breathless at the door- 
way. 

“ The bushrangers ! Alice, my love,” he said. We must fly 
this instant, they are close to us now.” 

She had been prepared for this. She knew her duty well, for 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


395 


her father had often told her wliat to do. No tears ! no hysterics ! 
She took Sam’s hand without a word, and placing her fairy foot 
upon his hoot, vaulted up into the saddle before him, crying, — 
“ Eleanor, Eleanor ! ” 

Eleanor, the cook, came running out. ‘‘ Fly ! ” said Alice. 
“Get away into the bush. The gang are coming; close by.” 
She, an old Vandemonian, needed no second warning, and as the 
two young people rode away, they saw her clearing the paddock 
rapidly, and making for a dense clump of wattles, which grew just 
beyond the fence. 

“Whither now, Sam?” said Alice, the moment they were 
started. 

“ I should feel safer across the river,” he replied ; “ that little 
wooded knoll would be a fine hiding-place, and they will come down 
this side of the river from Mayford’s.” 

“ From Mayford’s ! why, have they been there ? ” 

“ They have, indeed. Alas ! poor Cecil.” 

“ What has happened to him ? nothing serious ? ” 

“ Dead ! my love, dead.” 

“ Oh ! poor little Cecil,” she cried, “ that we were all so fond 
of. And Mrs. Mayford and Ellen ? ” 

“ They have escaped ! — they are not to be found — they have 
hidden away somewhere.” 

They crossed the river, and dismounting, they led the tired 
horse up the steep slope of turf that surrounded a little castellated 
tor of bluestone. Here they would hide till the storm was gone 
by, for from here they could see the windings of the river, and all 
the broad plain stretched out beneath their feet. 

“I do not see them anywhere, Alice,” said Sam presently. 
“I see no one coming across the plains. They must be either 
very near us in the hollow of the river-valley, or else a long way 
off. I have very little doubt they will come here, though, sooner 
or later.” 

“ There they are ! ” said Alice. “ Surely there are a large 
party of horsemen on the plain, but they are seven or eight miles ofi‘.” 

“ Ay, ten,” said Sam. “I am not sure they are horsemen.” 
Then he said suddenly in a whisper, “Lie down, my love, in God’s 
name ! Here they are, close to us ! ” 

There burst on his ear a confused sound of talking and laughing, 
and out of one of the rocky gullies leading towards the river, came 
the men they had been flying from, in number about fourteen. 
They had crossed the river, for some unknown reason, and to the 
fear- struck hiders it seemed as though they were making straight 
towards their lair. 


396 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


He had got Widderin’s head in his breast, blindfolding him with 
his coat, for should he neigh now, they were undone indeed ! As 
the bushrangers approached, the horse began to get uneasy, and 
paw the ground, putting Sam in such an agony of terror that the 
sweat rolled down his face. In the midst of this he felt a hand on 
his arm, and Alice’s voice, which he scarcely recognised, said, in 
a fierce whisper, — 

“ Give me one of your pistols, sir ! ” 

“ Leave that to me ! ” he replied in the same tone. 

“ As you please,” she said; “but I must not fall alive into 
their hands. Never look your mother in the face again if I do.” 

He gave one more glance round, and saw that the enemy would 
come within a hundred yards of their hiding-place. Then he held 
the horse faster than ever, and shut his eyes. 

*#***# 

Was it a minute only, or an hour till they heard the sound of 
the voices dying away in the roar of the river ; and, opening their 
eyes once more, looked into one another’s faces ? 

Faces, they thought, that they had never seen before, — so each 
told the other afterwards, — so wild, so haggard, and so strange ! 
And now that they were safe and free again — free to arise and leave 
their dreadful rock prison, and wander away where they would, 
they could scarcely believe that the danger was past. 

They came out silently from among the crags, and took up an- 
other station, where they could see all that went on. They saw 
the miscreants swarming about the house, and heard a pistol-shot 
— only one. 

“ Who can they be firing at ? ” said Alice, in a subdued tone. 
They were both so utterly appalled by their late danger, that 
they spoke in whispers, though the enemy were a quarter of a 
mile off. 

“ Mere mischief, I should fancy,” said Sam ; “ there is no one 
there. Oh ! Alice, my love, can you realise that we are 
safe ? ” 

“ Hardly yet, Sam ! But who could those men be we saw at 
such a distance on the plain ? Could they have been cattle ? I 
am seldom deceived, you know; I can see an immense distance.” 

“ Why,” said Sam, “ I had forgotten them ! They must be our 
friends, on these fellows’ tracks. Desborough would not be long 
starting, I know.” 

“ I hope my father,” said Alice, “ will hear nothing till he sees 
me. Poor father ! what a state he will be in. See, there is a 
horseman close to us. It is the Doctor ! ” 

They saw Dr. Mulhaus ride up to one of the heights overlook- 


GEOFFKY HAIVILYN. 


897 


ing the river, and reconnoitre. Seeing the men in the house, he 
began riding down towards them. 

“He will he lost!” said Alice. “He thinks we are there. 
Co’ee, Sam, at all risks.” 

Sam did so, and they saw the Doctor turn. Alice showed her- 
self for a moment, and then he turned hack, and rode the way he 
had come. In a few minutes he joined them from the rear, and, 
taking Alice in his anus, kissed her heartily. 

“ So our jewel is safe, then— praise he to God ! Thanks due 
also to a hrave man and a good horse. This is the last station 
those devils will ruin, for our friends are harely four miles off. I 
saw them just now.” 

“ I wish, I only wish,” said Sam, “ that they may delay long 
enough to be caught. I would give a good deal for that.” 

There was hut little chance of that though ; their measures were 
too well taken. Almost as Sam spoke, the three listeners heard 
a shrill whistle, and immediately the enemy began mounting. 
Some of them were evidently drunk, and could hardly get on their 
horses, but were assisted by the others. But very shortly they 
were all clear off, heading to the north-west. 

“Now we may go down, and see what destruction has been 
done,” said Alice. “ Who would have thought to see such times 
as these 1 ” 

“ Stay a little,” said the Doctor, “and let us watch these gentle- 
men’s motions. Where can they be going nor’ -west — straight on 
to the mountains ? ” 

“ I am of opinion,” said Sam, “ that they are going to lie up in 
one of the gullies this evening. They are full of drink and mad- 
ness, and they don’t know what they are about. If they get into 
the main system of gullies, w^e shall have them like rats in a trap, 
for they can never get out by the lower end. Do you see. Doctor, 
a little patch of white road among the trees over there ? That 
leads to the Limestone Gates, as we call it. If they pass those 
walls ujjwards, they are confined as in a pound. Watch the white 
road, and we shall see.” 

The piece of road alluded to was about two miles oft', and wind- 
ing round a steep hill among trees. Only one turn in it was visible, 
and over this, as they watched, they saw a dark spot pass, followed 
by a crowd of others. 

“ There they go,” said Sam. The madmen are safe now. 
See, there comes Desborough, and all of them ; let us go down.” 

They turned to go, and saw Jim coming towards them, by the 
route that Sam had come, all bespattered with clay, limping and 
leading his new grey horse, dead lame. 


398 


THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 


He threw up his hat when he saw them, and gave a feeble 
hurrah ! but even then a twinge of pain shot across his face, and, 
when he was close, they saw he was badly hurt. 

“ God save you, my dear sister,” he said ; “ I have been in such 
a state of mind ; God forgive me, I have been cursing the day I 
was born. Sam, I started about three minutes after you, and had 
very nearly succeeded in overhauling the Doctor, about two miles 
from here, when this brute put his foot in a crab hole, and came 
down, rolling on my leg. I was so bruised I couldn’t mount again, 
and so I have walked. I see you are all right though, and that is 
enough for me. Oh, my sister — my darling Alice ! Think what 
we have escaped ! ” 

So they went towards the house. And when Major Buckley 
caught sight of Alice, riding between Dr. Mulhaus and Sam, he 
gave such a stentorian cheer that the retreating bushrangers must 
have heard it. 

“ Well ridden, ‘gentlemen,” he said. ‘‘ And who won the race ? 
Was it Widderin, or the Arabian, or the nondescript Sydney 
importation ? ’ ’ 

“ The Sydney importation, sir, would have beaten the Arabian, 
barring accident,” said Jim. “ But, seriously speaking, I should 
have been far too late to be of any service.” 

“ And I,” said the Doctor, “ also. Sam won the race, and has 
got the prize. Now, let us look forward, and not backward.” 

They communicated to Desborough all particulars, and told him 
of the way they had seen the bushrangers go. Every one was 
struck with the change in him. No merry stories now. The 
laughing Irishman was gone, and a stern gloomy man, more like 
an Englishman, stood in his place. I heard after, that he deeply 
blamed himself for what had occurred (though no one else thought 
of doing so), and thought he had not taken full precautions. On 
the present occasion he said, — 

“ Well, gentlemen, night is closing in. Major Buckley, I think 
you will agree with me that we should act more effectually if we 
, waited till daylight, and refresh both horses and men. More par- 
ticularly as the enemy in their drunken madness have hampered 
themselves in the mountains. Major, Doctor Mulhaus, and Mr. 
Halbert, you are military men — what do you say ? ” 

They agreed that there was no doubt. It would be much the 
best plan. 

“ I would sooner he’d have gone to-night and got it over,” said 
Charles Hawker, taking Sam’s arm. “ Oh ! Sam, Sam ! Think 
of poor Cecil ! Think of poor Ellen, when she hears what has 
happened. She must know by now ! ” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


39r 


“Poor Charley,” said Sam, “I am so sorry for you ! Lie dowm, 
and get to sleep ; the sun is going down.” 

He lay down as he was bid, somewhere out of the way. He was 
crushed and stunned. He hardly seemed to know at present what 
he was doing. After a time, Sam went in and found him sleeping 
uneasily. 

But Alice was in sad tribulation at the mischief done. All her 
pretty little womanly ornaments overturned and broken, her piano 
battered to pieces, and, worst of all, her poor kangaroo shot dead, 
lying in the verandah. “ Oh ! ” said she to Major Buckley, “ you 
must think me very wicked to think of such things at a time like 
this, hut I cannot help it. There is something so shocking to me 
in such a sudden hoidevei'serneitt of old order. Yet, if it shocks 
me to see my piano broken, how terrible must a visitation like the 
Mayfords’ be ! These are not the times for moralising, however. 
I must see about entertaining the garrison.” 

Eleanor, the cook, had come hack from her lair quite uncon- 
cerned. She informed the company, in a nonchalant sort of way, 
that this was the third adventure of the kind she had been engaged 
in, and, that although they seemed to make a great fuss about it, 
on the other side (Van Diemen’s Land), it was considered a mere 
necessary nuisance ; and so proceeded to prepare such supper as 
she could. In the same off-hand way she remarked to Sam, when 
he w'ent into the kitchen to get a light for his pipe, that, if it was 
true that Mike Howe had crossed and was among them, they had 
better look out for squalls, for that he was a devil, and no 
mistake. 

Deshorough determined to set a watch out on the road towards 
the mouth of the gully, where they were supposed to he. “We 
shall have them in the morning,” said he. “ Let every one get 
to sleep who can sleep, for I expect every one to foUow me 
to-morrow.” 

Charles Hawker had lain down in an inner room, and was sleep- 
ing uneasily, when he was awakened by some one, and, looking up, 
saw Major Buckley, with a light in his hand, bending over him. 
He started up. 

“ What is the matter, sir ? ” he asked. “ Why do you look at 
me so strangely ? Is there any new misfortune ? ” 

“ Charles,” said the Major, “ you have no older friend than me.” 

“ I know it, sir. What do you want me to do ? ” 

“ I want you to stay at home to-morrow.” 

“ Anything but that, sir. They will call me a coward.” 

“ No one shall do so. I swear that he who calls you a coward 
siiall feel the weight of my ami.” 


40G 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


‘‘ Why am I not to go with them ? Why am I to be separated 
from the others ? ” 

“ You must not ask,” said the Major ; “ perhaps you will know 
some day, but not yet. All I say to you is, go home to your 
mother to-morrow, and stay there. Should you fire a shot, or 
strike a blow against those men we are going to hunt down, you 
may do a deed which would separate you from the rest of man- 
kind, and leave you to drag on a miserable guilty life. Do you 
promise ? ” 

“ I will promise,” said Charles ; “ but I wonder — — ” 

“ Never mind wondering. Good night.” 

The troopers lay in the hall, and in the middle of the night 
there was a sound of a horse outside, and he who was the nearest 
the door got up and went out. 

“ Who is there ? ” said the voice of Captain Brentwood. 

“Jackson, sir.” 

“ My house has been stuck up, has it not ? ” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ And my daughter ? ” 

“ Safe, sir. Young Mr. Buckley rode over and caught her up 
out of it ten minutes before they got here.” 

“ Long life to him, and glory to God. Who is here ? ” 

The trooper enumerated them. 

“ And what has become of the gang ? ” asked the Captain. 

“ Gone into the limestone gully, sir. Safe for to-morrow.” 

“ Ah, well, I shall come in and lie in the hall. Don’t make a 
noise. What is that ? ” 

They both started. Some one of the many sleepers, with that 
strange hoarse voice peculiar to those who talk in their dreams, 
said, with singular energy and distinctness, — 

“ I will go, sir ; they will call me coward.” 

“ That’s young Mr. Hawker, sir,” said the trooper. “ His 
sweetheart’s brother, Mr. Mayford, was killed by them yesterday. 
The head of this very gang, sir, that villain Touan — his name is 
Hawker. An odd coincidence, sir.” 

“ Very odd,” said the Captain. “ At the same time, Jackson, 
if I were you, I wouldn’t talk about it. There are many things 
one had best not talk about, Jackson. Pull out the corner of that 
blanket, will you ? So we shall have some fun to-morrow, up in 
the pass, I’m thinking.” 

“ They’ll fight, sir,” said the trooper. “ If we can bail them 
up, they’ll fight, believe me. Better so ; I think we shall save 
the hangman some trouble. Good night, sir.” 

So Captain Brentwood lay down beside the trooper, and slept 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


401 


the sleep of the just among his broken chairs and tables. The 
others slept too, sound and quiet, as though there were no fight 
on the morrow. 

But ere the moon grew pale they were woke by Desborough, 
tramping about with clicking spurs among the sleepers, and giving 
orders in a loud voice. At the first movement, while the rest were 
yawning and stretching themselves, and thinking that battle was 
not altogether so desirable a thing on a cold morning as it was 
overnight. Major Buckley was by Charles Hawker’s bedside, and, 
reminding him of his promise, got him out unperceived, helped 
him to saddle his horse, and started him off to his mother with a 
note. 

The lad, overawed by the Major’s serious manner, went without 
debate, putting the note in his pocket. I have seen that note ; 
Sam showed it to me the next day, and so I can give you the 
contents. It was from Major BucMey to Mary Hawker, and ran 
thus : — 

“ I have sent your boy to you, dear old friend, bearing this. 
You will have heard by now what has happened, and you will 
give me credit for preventing what might come to be a terrible 
catastrophe. The boy is utterly unconscious that his own father 
is the man whose life is sought this day above all others. He is 
at the head of this gang, Mary. My own son saw him yesterday. 
My hand shall not be raised against him ; but further than that I 
will not interfere. Your troubles have come now to the final and 
most terrible pass ; and all the advice I have to give you is to 
pray, and pray continually, till this awful storm is gone by. 
Remember, that come what may, you have two friends entirely 
devoted to you — my wife and myself.” 

HuiTiedly wi'itten, scrawled rather as this note was, it showed 
me again plainer than ever what a noble clear-hearted man he was 
who had written it. But this is not to the purpose. Charles 
Hawker departed, carrying this, before the others were stirring, 
and held his way through the forest-road towards his mother’s 
station. 

This same two days’ business was the best stroke of wmk that 
the Devil did in that part of the country for many years. With 
his usual sagacity he had busied himself in drawing the threads of 
mischief so parallel, that it seemed they must end in one and only 
one lamentable issue ; namely, that Charles Hawker and his father 
should meet, pistol in hand, as deadly enemies. But at this last 
period of the game, our good honest Major completely check-mated 

27 


402 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


him, by sending Charles Hawker home to his mother. In this 
terrible pass, after this unexpected move of the Major’s, he (the 
Devil, no other) began casting about for a scoundrel, by whose 
assistance he might turn the Major’s flank. But no great rogue 
being forthcoming he had to look round for the next best substi- 
tute, a great fool, — and one of these he found immediately, riding 
exactly the way he wished. Him he subpoenaed immediately, and 
found to do his work better even than a good rogue would have 
done. We shall see how poor Charles Hawker, pricking along 
through the forest, getting every moment further from danger and 
mischief, met a man charging along the road, full speed, who 
instantly pulled up and spoke to him. 

This was the consummate fool, sent of the Devil, whom I have 
mentioned above. We have seen him before. He was the longest, 
brownest, stupidest of the Hawbuck family. The one who could 
spit further than any of his brothers. 

“Well, Charley,” he said, “is this all true about the bush- 
rangers ? ” 

Charles said it was. And they were bailed up in the limestone 
gully, and all the party were away after them. 

“Where are you going then?” asked the unfortunate young 
idiot. 

“ Home to my mother,” blurted out poor Charles. 

“ Well ! ” said the other, speaking unconsciously exactly the 
words which the enemy of mankind desired. “ Well, I couldn’t 
have believed that. If a chap had said that of you in my hearing, 
I’d have fought him if he’d been as big as a house. I never 
thought that of you, Charley.” 

Charles cursed aloud. “ What have I done to be talked to like 
this ? Major Buckley has no right to send me away like this, to 
be branded as coward through the country side. Ten times over 
better to be shot than have such words as these said to me. I 
shall go back with you.” 

“ That’s the talk,” said the poor fool. “I thought I wasn’t 
wrong in you, Charley.” Amd so Charles galloped back with 
him. 

We, in the meantime, had started from the station, ere day was 
well broke. Foremost of the company rode Desborough, calm and 
serene, and on eitlier side of him Captain Brentwood and Major 
Buckley. Then came the Doctor, Sam, Jim, Halbert, and myself; 
behind us again, five troopers and the Sergeant. Each man of us 
all was armed with a sword ; and every man in that company, as 
it happened, knew the use of that weapon well. The troopers 
carried carbines, and all of us carried pistols. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


403 


The glare in the east changing from pearly green to golden 
yellow, gave notice of the coming sun. One snow peak, Tambo, 
I think, began to catch the light, and blaze like another morning 
star. The day had begun in earnest, and, as we entered the 
mouth of the glen to which we were bound, slanting gleams of 
light were already piercing the misty gloom, and lighting up the 
loftier crags. 

A deep, rock-walled glen it was, open and level ; though, in the 
centre, ran a tangled waving line of evergreen shrubs, marking 
the course of a pretty bright creek, which, half-hidden by luxuriant 
vegetation, ran beside the faint track leading to one of Captain 
Brentwood’s mountain huts. Along this track we could plainly 
see the hoof marks of the men we were after. 

It was one of the most beautiful gullies I had ever seen, and I 
turned to say so to some one who rode beside me. Conceive my 
horror at finding it was Charles Hawker ! I turned to him fiercely, 
and said, — 

“ Get back, Charles. Go home. You don’t know what you 
are doing, lad.” 

He defied me. And I was speaking roughly to him again, when 
there came a puff of smoke from among the rocks overhead, and 
down I went, head over heels. A bullet had grazed my thigh, 
and killed my horse, who, throwing me on my head, rendered me 
hors cle combat. So that during the fight which followed, I was 
sitting on a rock, very sick and very stupid, a mile from the scene 
of action. 

My catastrophe caused only a temporary stoppage ; and, during 
the confusion, Charles Hawker was unnoticed. The man who had 
fired at me (why at me I cannot divine), was evidently a solitary 
guard perched among the rocks. The others held on for about a 
quarter of an hour, till the valley narrowed up again, just leaving 
room for the track, between the brawling creek and the tall lime- 
stone cliff. But after this it opened out into a broader amphi- 
theatre, walled on all sides by inaccessible rock, save in two 
places. Sam, from whom I get this account of affairs, had just 
time to notice this, when he saw Captain Brentwood draw a pistol 
and fire it, and, at the same instant, a man dashed out of some 
scrub on the other side of the creek, and galloped away up the 
valley. 

“ They have had the precaution to set two watches for us, 
which I hardly expected,” said Captain Desborough. “ They will 
fight us now, they can’t help it, thank God. They have had a 
sharp turn and a merry one, but they are dead men, and they 
know it. The Devil is but a poor paymaster, Buckley. After 


/ 


404 


THE BECOLLECTIONS OF 


all this hide and seek work, they have only got two days’ 
liberty.” 

The troopers now went to the front with Halbert and the other 
military men, while Sam, Jim, and Charles, the last all unper- 
ceived by the Major in his excitement, rode in the rear. 

“We are going to have a regular battle,” said Jim. “ They 
are bailed up, and must fight : some of us will go home feet fore- 
most to-day.” 

So they rode on through the open forest till they began to see 
one or two horsemen through the tree-stems, reconnoitring. The 
ground began to rise towards a lofty clifi* that towered before them, 
and all could see that the end was coming. Then they caught 
sight of the whole gang, scattered about among the low shrubs, 
and a few shots were fired on both sides, before the enemy turned 
and retreated towards the wall of rock, now plainly visible through 
the timber. Our party continued to advance steadily in open 
order. 

Then under the beetling crags, where the fern-trees began to 
feather up among the fallen boulders, the bushrangers turned like 
hunted wolves, and stood at bay. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

THE FIGHT AMONG THE FEKN-TKEES. 

Then Captain Desborough cried aloud to ride at them, and spare 
no man. And, as he spoke, every golden fern-bough, and every 
coigne of vantage among the rocks, began to blaze and crackle 
with gun and pistol shot. Jim’s horse sprang aloft and fell, 
hurling him forcibly to the ground, and a tall young trooper, 
dropping his carbine, rolled heavily off his saddle, and lay on the 
grass face downward, quite still, as if asleep. 

“There’s the first man killed,” said the Major, very quietly. 
“ Sam, my boy, don’t get excited, but close on the first fellow you 
see a chance at.” And Sam, looking in his father’s face as he 
spoke, saw a light in his eyes, that he had never seen there before 
— the light of battle. The Major caught a carbine from the hands 
of a trooper who rode beside him, and took a snap-shot, quick as 
lightning, at a man whom they saw running from one cover to 
another. The poor wretch staggered and put his hands to his 
head, then stumbled and fell heavily do\ni. 


GEOFFRY HAIVILYN. 


405 


Now the fight hecame general and confused. All about among 
the fern and the flowers, among the lemon- shrubs, and the tangled 
vines, men fought, and fired, and struck, and cursed ; while the 
little brown bandicoots scudded swiftly away, and the deadly snake 
hid himself in his darkest lair, affrighted . Shots were cracking on 
all sides, two riderless horses, confused in the melee, were gallop- 
ing about neighing, and a third lay squealing on the ground in the 
agonies of death. 

Sam saw a man fire at his father, whose horse went down, while 
the Major arose unhurt. He rode at the rutfian, who was dis- 
mounted, and cut him so deep between the shoulder and the neck, 
that he fell and never spoke again. Then seeing Halbert and the 
Doctor on the right, fiercely engaged with four men who were 
fighting with clubbed muskets and knives, he turned to help them, 
but ere he reached them, a tall, handsome young fellow dashed out 
of the shrub, and pulling his horse short up, took deliberate aim 
at him, and fired. 

Sam heard the bullet go hissing past his ear, and got mad. 
“ That young dog shall go down,” said he. “I know him. He 
is one of the two who rode first yesterday.” And as this passed 
through his mind, he rode straight at him, with the sword hand 
upon his left shoulder. He came full against him in a moment, 
and as the man held up his gun to guard himself, his cut descended, 
so full and hard, that it shore through the gunharrel as through a 
stick,* and ere he could bring his hand to his cheek, his opponent 
had grappled him, and the two rolled off their horses together, 
locked in a deadly embrace. 

Then began an awful and deadly fight between these two young 
fellows. Sam’s sword had gone from his hand in the fall, and he 
was defenceless, save by such splendid physical powers as he had 
by nature. But his adversary, though perhaps a little lighter, was 
a terrible enemy, and fought with the strength and litheness of a 
leopard. He had his hand at Sam’s throat, and was trying to 
choke him. Sam saw that one great efibrt was necessary, and 
with a heave of his whole body, threw the other beneath him, and 
struck downwards, three quick blows, with the whole strength of 
his ponderous fist, on the face of the man, as he lay beneath him. 
The hold on his throat loosened, and seeing that they had rolled 
within reach of his sword, in a moment he had clutched it, and 
drawing back his elbow, prepared to plunge it into his adversary’s 
chest. 

But he hesitated. He could not do it. Maddened as he was 

* Lieutenant Anderson, unless I am mistaken, performed the same feat 
at the capture of a bushranger in ’52. 


406 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


with fighting, the sight of that bloody face, bruised beyond recog- 
nition by his terrible blows, and the wild fierce eyes, full of rage 
and terror, looking into his own, stayed his hand, and while he 
paused the man spoke, thick and indistinctly, for his jaw was 
broken. 

“ If you will spare me,” he said, “ I will be King’s evidence.’' 

“ Then turn on your face,” said Sam ; “ and I wiU tie you 
up.” 

And as he spoke a trooper ran up, and secured the prisoner, who 
appealed to Sam for his handkerchief. “ I fought you fair,” he 
said ; “ and you’re a man worth fighting. But you have broken 
something in my face with your fist. Give me something to tie it 
up with.” 

“ God save us all ! ” said Sam, giving him his handkerchief. 
“ This is miserable work ! I hope it is all over.” 

It seemed so. All we heard were the fearful screams of a 
wounded man lying somewhere among the fern. 

“ Where are they all, Jackson ? ” said he. 

“All away to the right, sir,” said the trooper. “One of my 
comrades is killed, your father has had his horse shot, the Doctor 
is hit in the arm, and Mr. James Brentwood has got his leg broke 
with the fall of his horse. They are minding him now. We’ve 
got all the gang, alive or dead, except two. Captain Desborough 
is up the valley now after the head man, and young Mr. Hawker 
is with him. D n it all ! hark to that. 

Two shots were fired in quick succession in the direction indi- 
cated ; and Sam, having caught his horse, galloped off to see what 
was going on. 

Desborough fought neither against small nor great, but only 
against one man, and he was George Hawker. Him he had sworn 
he would bring home, dead or alive. When he and his party had 
first broken through the fern, he had caught sight of his quarry, 
and had instantly made towards him, as quick as the broken 
scrub -tangled ground would allow. 

They knew one another ; and, as soon as Hawker saw that he 
was recognised, he made to the left, away from the rest of his 
gang, trying to reach, as Desborough could plainly see, the only 
practicable way that led from the amphitheatre in which they were 
back into the mountains. 

They fired at one another without efiect at the first. Hawker 
was now pushing in full flight, though the scrub was so dense that 
neither made much way. Now the ground got more open and 
easier travelled, when Desborough was aware of one who came 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


407 


charging recklessly up alongside of him, and looking round, he 
recognised Charles Hawker. 

“ Good lad,” he said ; “ come on. I must have that fellow 
before us there. He is the arch-devil of the lot. If we follow 
him to h — 11, we must have him ! ” 

“ We’ll have him safe enough ! ” said Charles. “ Push to the 
left. Captain, and we shall get him against those fallen rocks.” 

Deshorough saw the excellence of this advice. This was the 
last f>iece of broken ground there was. On the right the cliff rose 
precipitous, and from its side had tumbled a confused heap of 
broken rock, running out into the glen. Once past this, the man 
they were pursuing would have the advantage, for he was splendidly 
mounted, and beyond was clear galloping ground. As it was, he 
was in a recess, and Deshorough and Charles pushing forward, 
succeeded in bringing him to bay. Alas, too well ! 

George Hawker reined up his horse when he saw escape was 
impossible, and awaited their coming with a double-barrelled 
pistol in his hand. As the other two came on, calling on him to 
surrender, Deshorough ’s horse received a bullet in his chest, and 
down went horse and man together. But Charles pushed on till 
he was within ten yards of the bushranger, and levelled his pistol 
to fire. 

So met father and son, the second time in their lives, all 
unconsciously. For an instant they glared on one another with 
wild threatening eyes, as the father made his aim more certain 
and deadly. Was there no lightning in heaven to strike him 
dead, and save him from this last horrid crime ? Was there no 
warning voice to tell him that this was his son ? 

None. The bullet sped, and the poor boy tumbled from his 
saddle, clutching wildly, with crooked, convulsive fingers, at the 
grass and flowers — shot through the chest ! 

Then, ere Deshorough had disentangled himself from his fallen 
horse, George Hawker rode off laughing — out through the upper 
rock walls into the presence of the broad bald snow-line that rolled 
above his head in endless lofty tiers towards the sky. 

Deshorough arose, swearing and stamping ; but, ere he could 
pick up his cap, Sam was alongside of him, breathless, and with 
him another common-looking man — my man, Dick, no other — 
and they both cried out together, “ What has happened ? ” 

“Look there! ” said Deshorough, pointing to sometliing dark 
among the grass, — that’s what has happened. What lies there 
was Charles Hawker, and the villain is off.” 

“ Who shot Charles Hawker? ” said Dick. 

“ His namesake,” said Deshorough. 


408 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ His own father ! ” said Dick ; “ that’s terrible.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” they both asked aghast. 

“ Never mind now,” he answered. “ Captain Desborough, what 
are you going to do ? Do you know where he’s gone ? ” 

“ Up into the mountain, to lie by, I suppose,” said Desborough. 

“Not at all, sir ! He is going to cross the snow, and get to 
the old hut, near the Murray Gate.” 

“ What ! Merryman’s hut ? ” said the Captain. “ Impossible ! 
He could not get through that way.” 

“ I tell you he can. That is where they came from at first ; 
that is where they went to when they landed ; and this is the 
gully they came through.” 

“Are you deceiving me?” said Desborough. “It will be 
worse for you if you are ! I ain’t in a humour for that sort of 
thing. Who are you ? ” 

“ I am Mr. Hamlyn’s groom — Dick. Strike me dead if I ain’t 
telling the truth 1 ” 

“ Do you know this man, Buckley? ” said Desborough, calling 
out to Sam, who was sitting beside poor Charles Hawker, holding 
his head up. 

“ Know him ! of course I do,” he replied ; “ ever since I was a 
child.” 

“ Then, look here,” said Desborough to Dick, “ I shall trust 
you. Now, you say he ’will cross the snow. If I were to go 
round by the Parson’s I shouldn’t get much snow.” 

“ That’s just it, don’t you see ? You can be round at the 
huts before him. That’s what I mean,” said Dick. “ Take Mr. 
Buckley’s horse, and ride him till he drops, and you’ll get another 
at the Parson’s. If you have any snow, it will be on Broadsaddle ; 
but it won’t signify. You go round the low side of Tambo, and 
sight the lake, and you’ll be there before him.” 

“ How far ? ” 

“ Sixty miles, or thereabouts, plain sailing. It ain’t eleven 
o’clock yet.” 

“ Good ; I’ll remember you for this. Buckley, I want your 
horse. Is the lad dead ? ” 

“ No ; but he is very bad. I’ll try to get him home. Take 
the horse ; he is not so good a one as Widderin, but he’ll carry 
you to the Parson’s. God speed you.” 

They watched him ride away almost south, skirting the ridges of 
the mountain as long as he could ; then they saw him scrambling 
up a lofty wooded ridge, and there he disappeared. 

They raised poor Charles Hawker up, and Sam, mounting Dick’s 
horse, took the wounded man up before him, and started to go 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


^09 


slowly home. After a time, he said, “ Do you feel worse, Charles ? ” 
and the other replied, “ No ; but I am very cold.” After that, he 
stayed quite still, with his arm round Sam Buckley’s neck, until 
they reached the Brentwoods’ door. 

Some came out to. the door to meet them, and, among others, 
Alice. “ Take him from me,” said Sam to one of the men. “ Be 
very gentle ; he is asleep.” And so they took the dead man’s 
arm from off the living man’s shoulder, and carried him in ; for 
Charles Hawker was asleep indeed — in the sleep that knows no 
waking. 

****** 

That was one of the fiercest and firmest stands that was ever 
made by bushrangers against the authorities. Of the former five 
were shot down, three wounded, and the rest captured save two. 
The gang was destroyed at once, and life and property once more 
secure, though at a sad sacrifice. 

One trooper was shot dead at the first onset, — a fine young 
fellow, just picked from his regiment for good conduct to join the 
police. Another was desperately wounded, who died the next day. 
On the part of the independent men assisting, there were Charles 
Hawker killed. Doctor Mulhaus shot in the left arm, and Jim with 
his leg broke ; so that, on that evening. Captain Brentwood’s house 
w^as like a hospital. 

Captain Brentwood set his son’s leg, under Dr. Mulhaus’ direc- 
tions, the Doctor keeping mighty brave, though once or twice his 
face twisted with pain, and he was nearly fainting. Alice was 
everywhere, pale and calm, helping every one who needed it, and 
saying nothing. Eleanor, the cook, peiwaded the house, doing 
the work of seven women, and having the sympathies of fourteen. 
She told them that this was as had a job as she’d ever seen ; 
worse, in fact. That the nearest thing she’d ever seen to it was 
when Mat Steeman’s moh were broke up by the squatters ; “ But 
then,” she added, “there were none hut prisoners killed.” 

But when Alice had done all she could, and the house was 
quiet, she went up to her father, and said, — 

“ Now, father, comes the worst part of the matter for me. Who 
is to tell Mrs. Hawker ? ” 

“ Mrs. Buckley, my dear, would be the best person. But she 
is at the Mayfords’, I am afraid.” 

“ Mrs. Hawker must he told at once, father, by some of us. I 
do so dread her hearing of it by some accident, when none of 
her friends are with her. Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! I never thought 
to have had such times as these.” 

“ Alice, my darling,” said her father, “ do you think that you 


410 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


have strength to carry the news to her ? If Major Buckley went 
with you, he could tell her, you know ; and it would he much 
better for her to have him, an old friend, beside her. It would 
be such a delay to go round and fetch his wife. Have you 
courage ? ” 

“I will make courage,” she said. “ Speak to Major Buckley, 
father, and I will get ready.” 

She went to Sam. “ I am going on a terrible errand,” she said ; 
“ I am going to tell Mrs. Hawker about this dreadful, dreadful 
business. Now, what I want to say is, that you mustn’t come ; 
your father is going with me, and I’ll get through it alone, Sam. 
Now, please,” she added, seeing Sam was going to speak, “ don’t 
argue about it ; I am very much upset as it is, and I want you to 
stay here. You won’t follow us, will you ? ” 

“Whatever you order, Alice, is law,” said Sam. “I won’t 
come if you don’t wish it ; but I can’t see ” 

“ There now. Will you get me my horse ? And please stay 
by poor Jim, for my sake.” 

Sam complied ; and Alice, getting on her riding-habit, came 
back trembling, and trying not to cry, to tell Major Buckley that 
she was ready. 

He took her in his arms, and kissed her. “You are a brave 
noble girl,” he said; “I thank God for such a daughter-in-law. 
Now, my dear, let us hurry off, and not think of what is to 
come.” 

It was about five o’clock when they went off. Sam and Halbert 
having let them out of the paddock, went in-doors to comfort poor 
Jim’s heart, and to get something to eat, if it were procurable. 
Jim lay on his bed tossing about, and the Doctor sat beside him, 
talking to him, pale and grim, waiting for the doctor who had 
been sent for ; no other than his drunken old enemy. 

“ This is about as nice a kettle of fish,” said Jim, when they 
came and sat beside him, “ as a man could possibly wish to eat. 
Poor Cecil and Charley ; both gone, eh ? Well, I know it ain’t 
decent for a fellow with a broken leg to feel wicked ; but I do, 
nevertheless. I wish now that I had had a chance at some of 
them before that stupid brute of a horse got shot.” 

“ If you don’t lie still, you Jim,” said Sam, “ your leg will 
never set ; and then you must have it taken off, you know. How 
is your arm. Doctor ? ” 

“Shooting a little,” said the Doctor; “nothing to signify, I 
believe. At least, nothing in the midst of such a tragedy as this. 
Poor Mary Hawker ; the pretty little village-maid we all loved so 
well. To come to such an end as this ! ” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


411 


“ Is it true, then, Doctor, that Hawker, the bushranger, is her 
husband ? ” 

‘‘ Quite true, alas ! Every one must know it now. But I pray 
you, Sam, to keep the darkest part of it all from her ; don’t let 
her know that the hoy fell by the hand of his father.” 

“ I could almost swear,” said Sam, “ that one among the gang 
is his son too. When they rode past Alice and myself yesterday 
morning, one was beside him so wonderfully like him, that even 
at that time I set them down for father and son.” 

“ If Hamlyn’s strange tale he true, it is so,” said the Doctor. 
“ Is the young man you speak of among the prisoners, do vou 
know ? ” 

“Yes; I helped to capture him myself,” said Sam. “What 
do you mean by Hamlyn’s story? ” 

“Oh, a long one. He met him in a hut the night after we 
picnic’d at Mirngish, and found out who he was. The secret not 
being ours, your father and I never told any of you young people 
of the fact of this bushranger being poor Mrs. Hawker’s husband. 
I wish we had ; all this might have been avoided. But the poor 
soul always desired that the secret of his birth might be kept from 
Charles, and you see the consequence. I’ll never keep a secret 
again. Come here with me ; let us see both of them.” 

They followed him, and he turned into a little side room' at the 
back of the house. It was a room used for chance visitors or 
strangers, containing two small beds, which now bore an unac- 
customed burden, for beneath the snow-white coverlets lay two 
figures, indistinct indeed, but unmistakable. 

“ Which is he ? ” whispered the Doctor. 

Sam raised the counterpane from the nearest one, but it was 
not Charles. It was a young, handsome face that he saw, lying 
so quietly and peacefully on the white pillow, that he exclaimed — 

“ Surely this man is not dead ! ” 

The Doctor shook his head, “I have often seen them like 
that,” he said. “ He is shot through the heart.” 

Then they went to the other bed, where poor Charles lay. 
Sam gently raised the black curls from his face, but none of them 
spoke a word for a few minutes, tiU the Doctor said, “ Now let us 
come and see his brother.” 

They crossed the yard, to a slab outbuilding, before which one 
of the troopers was keeping guard, with a loaded carbine ; and, 
the Sergeant coming across, admitted them. 

Seven or eight fearfully ill-looking ruffians lay about on the 
floor, handcuffed. They were most of them of the usual convict 
stamp ; dark, saturnine-looking fellows, though one offered a 


412 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


strange contrast by being an Albino, and another they could not 
see plainly, for he was huddled up in a dark corner, bending down 
over a basin of water, and dabbing his face. The greater part of 
them cursed and blasphemed desperately, as is the manner of such 
men when their blood is up, and they are reckless ; while the 
wounded ones lay in a fierce sullen silence, more terrible almost 
than the foul language of the others. 

“He is not here,” said Sam. “ Stay, that must be him wiping 
his face.” 

He went towards him, and saw he was right. The young 
man he had taken looked wildly up like a trapped animal into his 
face, and the Doctor could not suppress an exclamation when he 
saw the likeness to his father. 

“ Is your face very bad ? ” said Sam quietly. 

The other turned away in silence. 

“ I’ll tie it up for you, if you like,” said Sam. 

“ It don’t want no tying up.” 

He turned his face to the wall, and remained obstinately silent. 
They perceived that nothing more was to be got from him, and 
departed. But, turning at the door, they still saw him crouched 
in the corner like a wild beast, wiping his bruised face every now 
and then with Sam’s handkerchief, apparently thinking of nothing, 
hoping for nothing. Such a pitiful sight — such an example of 
one who was gone Ijeyond feeling, hope, or sorrow, or aught else, 
save physical pain, that the Doctor’s gorge rose, and he said, 
stamping on the gravel, — 

“ A man, who says that that is not the saddest, saddest sight 
he ever saw, is a disgrace to the mother that bore him. To see 
a young fellow like that with such a physique — and God only 
knows what undeveloped qualities in him — only ripe for the gal- 
lows at five-and-twenty, is enough to make the angels weep. He 
knows no evil but physical pain, and that he considers but a 
temporary one. He knows no good, save, perhaps, to be faithful 
to his confederates. He has been brought up from his cradle to 
look on every man as his enemy. He never knew what it was to 
love a human being in his life. Why, wdiat does such a man 
regard this world as ? As the antechamber of hell, if he ever 
heard of such a place. I want to know what either of us three 
would have been if we had had his training. I want to know 
that now. We might have been as much worse than he is as a 
wolf is worse than an evil-tempered dog.” 

A beautiful collie came up to the Doctor and fawned on 
him, looking into his face with her deep, expressive, hazel 
eyes. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


413 


“We must do someth ing for that fellow, Sam. If it’s only for 
his name’s sake,” said the Doctor. 

■5^ ■<< "sr -;$• 

That poor hoy sitting crouched there in the corner, with a 
broken jaw, and just so much of human feeling as one may sup- 
pose a pole-cat to have, caught in a gin, is that same baby that 
we saw Ellen Lee nursing on the door-step in the rain, when our 
poor Mary came upon her on one wild night in Exeter. 

Base-bom, workhouse-bred! Tossed from workhouse to prison, 
from prison to hulk — every man’s hand against him — an Arab of 
society. As hopeless a case, my lord judge, as you ever had to 
deal with ; and yet I think, my lord, that your big heart grows a 
little pitiful, when you see that handsome face before you, blank 
and careless, and you try, fruitlessly, to raise some blush of 
shame, or even anger in it, by your eloquence. 

Gone beyond that, my lord. Your thunderbolts fall harmless 
here, and the man you say is lost, and naturally. Yet, give that 
same man room to breathe and act ; keep temptation from him, 
and let his good qualities, should he have any, have fair play, and, 
even yet, he may convert you to the belief that hardened crimi- 
nals* may be reformed, to the extent of one in a dozen ; beyond 
that no reasonable man will go. 

Let us see the end of this man. For now the end of my tale 
draws near, and I must begin gathering up the threads of the 
story, to tie them in a knot, and release my readers from duty. 
Here is all I can gather about him, — 

Sam and the Doctor moved heaven, earth, and the Colonial 
Secretary, to get his sentence commuted, and with success. So 
when his companions were led out to execution, he was held back; 
reserved for penal servitude for life. 

He proved himself quiet and docile ; so much so that when our 
greatest, boldest explorer was starting for his last hopeless journey 
to the interior, this man was selected as one of the twelve convicts 
who were to accompany him. What follows is an extract which 
I have been favoured with from his private journal. You will not 
find it in the published history of the expedition : — 

“ Date — lat. — long. — Morning. It is getting hopeless now, 
and to-morrow I turn. Sand, and nothing but sand. The salso- 
laceous plants, so long the only vegetation we have seen, are gone ; 
and the little sienite peak, the last symptom of a water-bearing 
country, has disappeared behind us. The sandhills still roll 
away towards the setting sun, but get less and less elevated. 
The wild fowl are still holding their mysterious flight to the north- 
west, but I have not wings to follow them. Oh, my God ! if I 


414 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


onl}^ knew what those silly birds know. It is hopeless to go on. 
and, I begin to fear, hopeless to go back. Will it novel’ rain 
again ? 

“Afternoon, — My servant Hawker, one of the convicts assigned 
to me by Government, died to-day at noon. I had got fond of 
this man, as the most patient and the bravest, where all have 
been so patient and so brave. He was a very silent and reserved 
man, and had never complained, so that I was deeply shocked, on 
his sending for me at dinner-time, to find that he was dying. 

“ He asked me not to deceive him, but to tell him if there was 
any truth in what the gaol-chaplain had said, about there being 
another life after death. I told him earnestly that I knew it as 
surely as I knew that the earth was under my feet ; and went on 
comforting him as one comforts a dying man. But he never spoke 
again ; and we buried him in the hot sand at sundown. The first 
wind will obliterate the little mound we raised over him, and none 
will ever cross this hideous desert again. So that he will have as 
cpiiet a grave as he could wish. 

“ Eleven o’clock at night. — God be praised. Heavy clouds 
and thunder to the north. — ” 

So this poor workhouse -bred lad lies out among the sands of 
the middle desert. 


CHAPTER XLHI. 

ACROSS THE SNOW. 

Hawker the elder, as I said, casting one glance at the body of 
his son, whom he knew not, and another at Captain Hesborough, 
who was just rising from the ground after his fall, set spurs to his 
noble chestnut horse, and pushing through the contracted barriers 
of slate which closed up the southern end of the amphitheatre 
where they had been surprised, made for the broader and rapidly 
rising valley which stretched beyond. 

He soon reached the rocky gate, where the vast ridge of lime- 
stone alternating with the schist, and running north and south in 
high serrated ridges, was cut through by a deep fissure, formed 
by the never idle waters of a little creek, that in the course of 
ages had mined away the softer portions of the rock, and made a 
practicable pass toward the mountains. 

Ho picked his way with difficulty through the tumbled boulders 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


415 


that lay in the chasm ; and then there was a cool brisk wind on 
his forehead, and a glare in his eyes. The chill breath of the 
west wind from the mountain — the glare of the snow that filled up 
the upper end of the valley, rising in level ridges towards the 
sky-line. 

He had been this path before ; and if he had gone it a hundred 
times again, he would only have cursed it for a rough desperate 
road, the only hope of a desperate man. Not for him to notice the 
thousand lessons that the Lord had spread before him in the wilder- 
ness ! not for him to notice how the vegetation changed when the 
limestone was passed, and the white quartz reefs began to seam 
the slaty sides of the valley like rivers of silver ! Not for him to 
see how, as he went up and on, the hardy Dicksonia still nestled 
in stunted tufts among the more sheltered side gullies, long after 
her tenderer sister, the queenly Alsophylla* had been left behind. 
He only knew that he was a hunted wild beast, and that his lair 
was beyond the snow. 

The creek flashed pleasantly among the broken slate, full and 
turbid under the mid-day sun. After midnight, when its foun- 
tains are sealed again by the frosty breath of night, that creek 
would be reduced to a trickling rill. His horse’s feet brushed 
through the delicate asplenium, the Venus’ -hair of Australia ; 
the sarsaparilla still hung in scant purple tufts on the golden 
wattle, and the scarlet correa lurked among the broken quartz. 

Upwards and onwards. In front, endless cycles agone, a lava 
stream from some crater we know not of, had burst over the slate, 
with fearful clang and fierce explosion, forming a broad roadway 
of broken basalt up to a plateau twelve hundred feet or more above 
us, and not so steep but that a horse might be led up it. Let us 
go up with him, not cursing heaven and earth, as he did, but 
noticing how, as we ascend, the scarlet weaths of the Kennedia 
and the crimson Clrevillea give place to the golden Grevillea and 
the red Epacris ; then comes the white Epacris, and then the 
grass trees, getting smaller and scantier as we go, till the little 
blue Gentian, blossoming boldly among tlie slippery crags, tells us 
that we have nearly reached the limits of vegetation. 

He turned when he reached this spot, and looked around him. 
To the west a broad rolling domi of snow, rising gradually ; to the 
east, a noble prospect of forest and plain, hill and gully, with old 
Snowy winding on in broad bright curves to the sea. He looked 
over all the beauty and undeveloped wealth of Gipp’s Land, which 
shall yet, please God, in fuhiess of time, be one of the brightest 
jewels in the King of England’s croAvn, but with eyes that saw not. 

* The two species of fern -tree. 


416 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


He turned towards the snow and mounting his horse which he had 
led up the cliff, held steadily westward. 

His plans were well laid. Across the mountain, north of Lake 
Omeo, not far from the mighty cleft in which the infant Murray 
spends his youth, were two huts, erected years before by some 
settler, and abandoned. They had been used by a gang of bush- 
rangers, who had been attacked by the police, and dispersed. 
Nevertheless, they had been since inhabited by the men we know 
of, who landed in the boat from Van Diemen’s Land, in conse- 
quence of Hawker himself having found a pass through the ranges, 
open for nine months in the year. So that, when the police were 
searching Gipp’s Land for these men, they, with the exception of 
two or three, were snugly ensconced on the other water-shed, wait- 
ing till the storm should blow over. In these huts Hawker intended 
to lie by for a short time, living on such provisions as were left, 
until he could make his way northward on the outskirts of the 
settlements, and escape. 

There was no pursuit, he thought : how could there be ? Who 
knew of this route but himself and his mates ? hardly likely any of 
them would betray him. No creature was moving in the valley he 
had just ascended, but the sun was beginning to slope towards the 
west, and he must onwards. 

Onwards, across the slippery snow. At first a few tree-stems, 
blighted and withered, were visible right and left, proving that at 
some time during their existence, these bald downs had either a 
less elevation or a warmer climate than now. Then these even 
disappeared, and all around was one white blinding glare. To the 
right, the snow-fields rolled up into the shapeless lofty mass called 
Mount Tambo, behind which the hill they now call Kosciusko,* — 
as some say, the highest ground in the country, — began to take a 
crimson tint from the declining sun. Far to the south, black and 
gcxunt among the whitened hills, towered the rounded hump of Buf- 
faloe, while the peaks of Buffer and Aberdeen showed like dim 
blue clouds on the furthest horizon. 

SnoAV, and nothing but snow. Sometimes plunging shoulder 

* Mr. Macarthur, companion of Count Strzelecki, seems to believe that 
Kosciusko is actually the highest point. But I believe Mr. Selwyn is of 
opinion that there is a peak (“ down ” would be a more correct word) 
higher yet. Mount Kosciusko is between 7,000 and 8,000 feet above the 
sea, from which it is visible. It is hard to believe, however, that this is 
the highest point in the Australian Alps. The nautical charts lay down 
here, “ snowy mountains, visible twenty-five leagues at sea.” And con- 
sidering that they are at least fifteen leagues inland,.! cannot help think- 
ing, either that Kosciusko is not the highest point, or that it^ height is 
underrated. 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


417 


deep into some treacherous hollow, sometimes guiding the tired 
horse across the surface frozen over unknown depths. He had 
been drinking hard for some days, and, now the excitement of 
action had gone off, was fearfully nervous. The snow- glint had 
dizzied his head, too, and he began to see strange shapes forming 
themselves in the shade of each hollow, and start at each stumble 
of his horse. 

A swift-flying shadow upon the snow, and a rush of wings over- 
head. An eagle. The lordly scavenger is following him, impa- 
tient for him to drop and become a prey. Soar up, old bird, and 
bide thy time ; on yonder precipice thou shalt have good chance 
of a meal. 

Twilight, and then night, and yet the snow but half past. There 
is a rock in a hollow, where grow a few scanty tufts of grass which 
the poor horse may eat. Here he will camp, fireless, foodless, and 
walk up and down the livelong night, for sleep might be death. 
Though he is not in thoroughly Alpine regions, yet still, at this 
time of the year, the snow is deep and the frost is keen. It were 
as well to keep awake. 

As he paced up and down beneath the sheltering rock, when 
night had closed in, and the frosty stars were twinkling in the cold 
blue firmament, strange ghosts and fancies came crowding on him 
thick and fast. Down the long vista of a misspent, ruined life, he 
saw people long since forgotten trooping up towards him. His 
father tottered sternly on, as with a fixed purpose before him ; his 
gipsy-mother, Madge, strode forward pitiless ; and poor ruined 
Ellen, holding her child to her heart, joined the others and held 
up her withered hand as if in mockery. But then there came a 
face between him and all the other figures which his distempered 
brain had summoned, and blotted them out ; the face of a young 
man, bearing a strange likeness to himself ; the face of the last 
human creature he had seen ; the face of the boy that he had shot 
down among the fern. 

Why should this face grow before him wherever he turned, so 
that he could not look on rock or sky without seeing it ? Why 
should it glare at him through a blood-red haze when he shut his 
eyes to keep it out, not in sorrow, not in anger, but even as he had 
seen it last, expressing only terror and pain, as the lad rolled ofi' 
his horse, and lay a l3lack heap among the flowers ? Up and 
away ! anything is better than this. Let us stumble away across 
the snow, through the mirk night once more, rather than be driven 
mad by this pale boy’s face. 

Morning, and the pale ghosts have departed. Long shadows of 
horse and man are thrown before him now, as the slope dips 

28 


418 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


away to the westward, and he knows that his journey is well-nigh 
over. 

It was late in the afternoon before, having left the snow some 
hours, he began to lead his horse dowm a wooded precipice, through 
vegetation Avliich grew more luxuriant every yard he descended. 
The glen, whose bottom he was trying to reach, was a black pro- 
found gulf, with perpendicular, or rather, over-hanging w^alls, on 
every side, save where he was scrambling down. Here indeed it 
was possible for a horse to keep his footing among the belts of 
trees, that, alternating with precipitous granite cliff, formed the 
upper end of one of the most tremendous glens in the world — the 
Gates of the Murray. 

He was barely one-third of the way down this mountain wall, 
when the poor tired horse lost his footing and fell over the edge, 
touching neither tree nor stone for five hundred feet, while George 
Hawker was left terrified, hardly daring to peer into the dim abyss, 
where the poor beast was gone. 

But it was little matter. The hut he was making for was barely 
four miles off now, and there was meat, drink, and safety. Perhaps 
there might be company, he hoped there might, — some of the gang 
might have escaped. A dog would be some sort of friend. Any- 
thing sooner than such another night as last night. 

His pistols were gone with tlie saddle, and he was unarmed. 
He reached the base of the cliff* in safety, and forced his way 
through the tangled scrub that fringed the infant river, towards the 
lower end of the pass. Here the granite walls, overhanging, bend 
forward above to meet one another, almost forming an arch, the 
height of which, from the river-bed, is computed to be nearly, if 
not quite, three thousand feet. Through this awful gate he forced 
his way, overawed and utterly dispirited, and reached the gully 
where Ins refuge lay, just as the sun was setting. 

There was a slight track, partly formed by stray cattle, which 
led up it ; and casting his eyes upon this, he saw the marks of a 
horse’s feet. “ Some one of the gang got home before me,” he 
said. “ I’m right glad of that, anything better than such another 
night.” 

He turned a sharp angle in the path, just where it ran round an 
abrupt cliff. He saw a horseman within ten yards of him with his 
face towards him. Captain Desborough, holding a pistol at his 
head. 

“ Surrender, George Hawker ! ” said Desborough. “ Or, by the 
living Lord ! you are a dead man.” 

Hungry, cold, desperate, unarmed ; he saw that he was undone, 
and that hope was dead. The Captain had an easier prey than he 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


419 


had anticipated. Hawker threw up his arms, and ere he could 
fully appreciate his situation, he was chained fast to Heshorough’s 
saddle, only to he loosed, he knew, by the gallows. 

Without a word on either side they began their terrible journey, 
Desborough riding, and Hawker manacled by his right wrist to 
the saddle. Fully a mile was passed before the latter asked 
sullenly,^ — • 

“ Where are you going to take me to-night ? ” 

“ To Dickenson’s,” replied Desborough. ‘‘ You must step out, 
you know. It will be for your own good, for I must get there to- 
night.” 

Two or three miles further were got over, when Hawker said 
abruptly, — 

“ Look here. Captain, I want to talk to you.” 

“ You had better not,” said Desborough. “I don’t want to 
have any communication with you, and every word you say will go 
against you.” 

“ Bah ! ” said Hawker. “ I must swing. I know that. I shan’t 
make any defence. Why, the devils out of hell would come into 
court against me if I did. But I want to ask you a question or 
two. You haven’t got the character of being a brutal fellow, like 

0 . It can’t hurt you to answer me one or two things, and 

ease my mind a bit.” 

“ God help you, unhappy man,” said Desborough. “ I will 
answer any questions you ask.” 

‘‘ WeU, then, see here,” said Hawker, hesitating. “ I want to 
know — I want to know first, how you got round before me ? ” 

‘‘ Is that all? ” said Desborough. “ Well, I came round over 
Broadsaddle, and got a fresh horse at the Parson’s.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Hawker. “ That young fellow I shot down when 
you were after me, is he dead ? ” 

'‘By this time,” said Desborough. “ He was just dying when 

1 came away.” 

“ Would you mind stopping for a moment. Captain ? Now tell 
me, who was he ? ” 

“Mr. Charles Hawker, son of Mrs. Hawker, of Toonarbin.” 

He gave such a yeU that Desborough shrunk from him appalled, 

- — a cry as of a wounded tiger, and struggled so wildly with his 
handcuff that the blood poured from his wrist. Let us close this 
scene. Desborough told me afterwards, that that wild, fierce, 
despairing cry, rang in his ears for many years afterwards, and 
would never be forgotten till those ears were closed with the dust 
of the gravQ. 


420 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

HOW MARY HAWKER HEARD THE NEWS. 

Troubridge’s Station, Toonarbin, lay so far back from the river, 
and so entirely on the road to nowhere, that Tom used to remark, 
that he would back it for being the worst station for news in the 
country. So it happened while these terrible scenes were enacting 
within ten miles of them, down, in fact, to about one o’clock in 
the day when the bushrangers were overtaken and punished, Mary 
and her cousin sat totally unconscious of what was going on. 

But about eleven o’clock that day, Burnside, the cattle dealer, 
mentioned once before in these pages, arrived at Major Buckley’s, 
from somewhere up country, and found the house apparently 
deserted. 

But having coee’d for some time, a door opened in one of the 
huts, and a sleepy groom came forth, yawning. 

“ Where are they all ? ” asked Burnside. 

“ Mrs. Buckley and the women were down at Mrs. Mayford’s, 
streaking the bodies out,” he believed. “ The rest were gone 
away after the gang.” 

This was the first that Burnside had heard about the matter. 
And now, bit by bit, he extracted everything from the sleepy 
groom. 

I got him afterwards to confess to me, that when he heard of 
this terrible alfair, his natural feeling of horror was considerably 
alloyed with pleasure. He saw here at one glance a fund of small 
talk for six months. He saw himself a welcome visitor at every 
station, even up to furthest lonely Condamine, retailing the news 
of these occurrences with all the authenticity of an eye witness, 
improving his narrative by each repetition. Here was the basis of 
a new tale. Ode, Epic, Saga, or what you may please to call it, 
which he, Burnside, the bard, should sing at each fireside through- 
out the land. 

“ And how are Mrs. and Miss Mayford, poor souls ? ” ho 
asked. 

“They’re as well,” answered the groom, “ as you’d expect folks 
to be after such a mishap. They ran out at the back way and 
down the garden towards the river before the chaps could burst 
the door down. I am sorry for that little chap, Cecil, I am, by 
Jove! A straightforward, manly little chap as ever crossed a 
horse. Last week he says to me, says he, ‘ Benjy, my boy,’ says 
he, ‘come and be groom to me. I’ll give you thirty pound a-year.’ 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


421 


And I says, ‘ If Mr. Sam ’ HaUo, there they are at it, hammer 

and tongs ! Sharp work that ! ’ ’ 

They both listened intently. They could hear, borne on the 
west wind, a distant dropping fire and a shouting. The groom’s 
eye began to kindle a bit, hut Burnside, sitting yet upon his horse, 
grasped the lad’s shoulder and cried, “ God save us, suppose our 
men should be beaten ! ” 

“ Suppose,” said the groom, contemptuously shaking him off; 
‘‘ why then you and I should get our throats cut.” 

At this moment the noise of the distant fight breezed up louder 
than ever. 

‘‘They’re beat hack,” said Burnside. “I shall he off to 
Toonarhin, and give them warning. I advise you to save your- 
self.” 

“ I was set to mind these here things,” said Benjy, “ and I’m 
a-going to mind ’em. And they as meddles with ’em had better 
look out.” 

Burnside started off for Toonarhin, and when half-way there he 
paused and listened. The firing had ceased. When he came to 
reflect, now that his panic was over, he had very little doubt that 
Deshorough’s party had gained the day. It was impossible, he 
thought, that it could he otherwise. 

Nevertheless, being half-way to Toonarhin, he determined to 
ride on, and, having called in a moment, to follow a road which 
took a way past Lee’s old hut towards the scene of action. He 
very soon pulled up at the door, and Tom Trouhridge came slowly 
out to meet him. 

“ Hallo, Burnside ! ” said Tom. “ Get off, and come in.” 

“ Not I, indeed. I am going off to see the fight.” 

“ What fight ? ” said Mary Hawker, looking over Tom’s 
shoulder. 

“ Do you mean to say you have not heard the news ? ” 

“ Not a word of any news for a fortnight.” 

For once in his life, Burnside was laconic, and told them all 
that had happened. Tom spoke not a word, but ran up to the 
stable and had a horse out, saddled in a minute, he was dashing 
into the house again for his hat and pistols when he came against 
Mary in the passage, leaning against the wall. 

“ Tom,” she whispered hoarsely. “ Bring that boy hack to me 
safe, or never look me in the face again ! ” 

He never answered her, he was thinking of some one beside the 
boy. He pushed past her, and the next moment she saw him 
gallop away with Burnside, followed by two men, and now she was 
left alone indeed, and helpless. 


422 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


There was not a soul about the place but herself ; not a soul 
within ten miles. • She stood looking out of the door fixedly, at 
nothing, for a time ; but then, as hour by hour went on, and the 
afternoon stillness fell upon the forest, and the shadows began to 
slant, a terror began to grow upon her which at length became 
unbearable, and well-nigh drove her mad. 

At the first she understood that all these years of anxiety had 
come to a point at last, and a strange feeling of excitement, almost 
joy, came over her. She was one of those impetuous characters 
who stand suspense worse than anything, and now, although terror 
was in her, she felt as though relief was nigh. Then she began 
to think again of her son, but only for an instant. He was under 
Major Buckley’s care, and must be safe ; so that she dismissed 
that fear from her mind for a time, but only for a time. It came 
back to her again. Why did he not come to her ? Why had not 
the Major sent him off to her at once ? Could the Major have 
been killed ? even if so, there was Doctor Mulhaus. Her terrors 
were absurd. 

But not the less terrors, that grew in strength hour by hour, as 
she waited there, looking at the pleasant spring forest, and no one 
came. Terrors that grew at last so strong, that they took the 
place of certainties. Some hitch must have taken place, and her 
boy must be gone out with the rest. 

Having got as far as this, to go further was no difficulty. He 
was killed, she felt sure of it, and none had courage to come and 
tell her of it. She suddenly determined to verify her thoughts at 
once, and went indoors to get her hat. 

She had fully made up her mind that he must be killed at this 
time. The hope of his having escaped was gone. We who know 
the real state of the case, should tremble for her reason, when she 
finds her fears so terribly true. We shall see. 

She determined to start away to the Brentwoods’, and end her 
present state of terror one way or another. Tom had taken the 
only horse in the stable, but her own brown pony was running in 
the paddock with some others ; and she sallied forth, worn out, 
feverish, half-mad, to try to catch him. 

The obstinate brute would not be caught. Then she spent a 
weary hour trying to drive them all into the stockyard, but in vain. 
Three times, she, with infinite labour, drove them up to the slip- 
rail, and each time the same mare and foal broke away, leading off 
the others. The third time, when she saw them all run whinnying 
down to the further end of the paddock, after half an hour or so of 
weary work driving them up, when she had run herself off her 
poor tottering legs, and saw that all her toil was in vain, then she 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


423 


sank down on the cold hard gravel in the yard, with her long black 
hair streaming loose along the ground, and prayed that she might 
die. Down at full length, in front of her own door, like a dead 
woman, moaning and crying, from time to time, “ Oh, my boy, my 
boy.” 

How long she lay there she knew not. She heard a horse’s 
feet, but only stopped her ears from the news she thought was 
coming. Then she heard a steady heavy footstep close to her, and 
some one touched her, and tried to raise her. 

She sat up, shook the hair from her eyes, and looked at the man 
who stood beside her. At first she thought it was a phantom of 
her own brain, but then looking wildly at the calm, solemn features 
and the kindly grey eyes which were gazing at her so inquiringly, 
she pronounced his name — “ Frank Maberly.” 

“ God save you, madam,” he said. What is the matter ? ” 

“ Misery, wrath, madness, despair ! ” she cried wildly, raising 
her hand. ‘‘ The retribution of a lifetime fallen on my luckless 
head in one unhappy moment.” 

Frank Maberly looked at her in real pity, but a thought went 
through his head. ‘‘ What a magnificent actress this woman 
would make.” It merely passed through his brain and was gone, 
and then he felt ashamed of himself for entertaining it a 
moment ; and yet it was not altogether an unnatural one for him 
who knew her character so well. She wvas lying on the ground in 
an attitude which would have driven Siddons to despair ; one white 
arm, down which her sleeve had fallen, pressed against her fore- 
head, while the other clutched the ground ; and her splendid 
black hair fallen do^vn across her shoulders. Yet how could ho 
say how much of all this wild despair was real, and how much 
hysterical ? 

“ But what is the matter, Mary Hawker? ” he asked. ‘‘ Tell 
me, or how can I help you ? ” 

“Matter?” she said. “Listen. The bushrangers are come 
down from the mountains, spreading ruin, murder, and destruction 
far and wide. My husband is captain of the gang : and my son, 
my only son, whom I have loved better than my God, is gone with 
the rest to hunt them down — to seek, unknowing, his own father’s 
life. There is mischief beyond your mending, priest ! ” 

Beyond his mending, indeed. He saw it. “ Rise up,” he said, 
“ and act. Tell me all the circumstances. Is it too late ? ” 

She told him how it had come to pass, and then he showed her 
that all her terrors were but anticipations, and might be false. He 
got her pony for her, and, as night was falling, rode away with her 
along the mountain road that led to Captain Brentwood’s, 


424 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


The sun was down, and ere they had gone far, the moon was 
bright overhead. Frank, having fully persuaded himself that all 
her terrors were the effect of an overwrought imagination, grew 
cheerful, and tried to laugh her out of them. She, too, with the 
exercise of riding through the night-air, and the company of a 
handsome, agreeable, well-bred man, began to have a lurking idea 
that she had been making a fool of herself; when they came 
suddenly on a hut, dark, cheerless, deserted, standing above a 
black, stagnant, reed-grown waterhole. 

The hut where Frank had gone to preach to the stockmen. The 
hut where Lee had been murdered — an ill-omened place ; and as 
they came opposite to it, they saw two others approaching them in 
the moonlight — Major Buckley and Alice Brentwood. 

Then Alice, pushing fonvard, bravely met her, and told her all 
— all, from beginning to end : and when she had finished, having 
borne up nobly, fell to weeping as though her heart would break. 
But Mary did not weep, or cry, or fall down. She only said, “Let 
me see him,” and went on with them, silent and steady. 

They got to Garoopna late at night, none having spoken all the 
way. Then they showed her into the room where poor Charles lay, 
cold and stiff, and there she stayed, hour after hour through the 
weary night. Alice looked in once or twice, and saw her sitting 
on the bed which bore the corpse of her son, with her face buried 
in her hands ; and at last, summoning courage, took her by the 
arm and led her gently to bed. 

Then she went into the drawing-room, where, besides her father, 
were Major Buckley, Doctor Mulhaus, Frank Maherly, and the 
drunken doctor before spoken of, who had had the sublime pleasure 
of cutting a bullet from his old adversary’s arm, and was now in a 
fair way to justify the sobriquet 1 have so often applied to him. I 
myself also was sitting next the fire, alongside of Frank Maherly. 

“ My brave girl,” said the Major, “ how is she ? ” 

“ I hardly can tell you, sir,” said Alice ; •“ she is so very quiet. 
If she would cry now, I should he very glad. It would not frighten 
me so much as seeing her like that. I fear she will die ! ” 

“ If her reason holds,” said the Doctor, “ she will get over it. 
She had, from all accounts, gone through every phase of passion 
down to utter despair, before she knew the blow had fallen. Poor 
Mary ! ” 

* 'I' * il; 

There, we have done. All this misery has come on her from one 
act of folly and selfishness years ago. How many lives are ruined, 
how many families broken up, by one false step ! If ever a poor 
soul has expiated her ovm offence, she has. Let us hope that 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


425 


brighter times are in store for her. Let us have done with moral 
reflections ; I am no hand at that work. One more dark scene, 
reader, and then. — 

;!; Hi * * H; 

It was one wild dreary day in the spring ; a day of furious wind 
and cutting rain ; a day when few passengers were abroad, and wheu 
the boatmen were gathered in knots among the sheltered spots upon 
the quays, waiting to hear of disasters at sea ; when the ships creaked 
and groaned at the wharfs, and the harbour w'as a sheet of wind- 
driven foam, and the domain was strewed with broken boughs. On 
such a day as this. Major Buckley and myself, after a sharp walk, 
found ourselves in front of the principal gaol in Sydney. 

We were admitted, for we had orders ; and a small, wiry, clever- 
looking man, about fifty, bowed to us as we entered the whitewashed 
corridor, which led from the entrance hall. We had a few words 
with him, and then followed him. 

To the darkest passage in the darkest end of that dreary place ; 
to the condemned cells. And my heart sunk as the heavy bolt 
shot back, and we went into the first one on the right. 

Before us was a kind of bed-place. And on that bed-place lay 
the figure of a man. Though it is twenty years ago since I saw it, 
I can remember that scene as though it were yesterday. 

He lay upon a heap of tumbled blankets, with his face buried in 
a pillow. One leg touched the ground, and round it was a ring, 
connecting the limb to a long iron bar, which ran along beneath the 
bed. One arm also hung listlessly on the cold stone floor, and the 
other was throwm around his head. A head covered with short 
black curls, worthy of an Antinous, above a bare muscular neck, 
worthy of a Famese Hercules. I advanced towards him. 

The governor held me back. “My God, sir,” he said, “take 
care. Don’t, as you value your life, go within length of his chain.” 
But at that moment the handsome head w^as raised from the pillow, 
and my eyes met George Hawker’s. Oh, Lord ! such a piteous 
wild look. I could not see the fierce desperate villain who had 
kept our country-side in terror so long. No, thank God, I could 
only see the handsome curly-headed boy who used to play with 
James Stockbridge and myself among the gravestones in Drumston 
churchyard. I saw again the merry lad who used to bathe with 
us in Hatherleigh water, and whom, with all his faults, I had once 
loved well. And seeing him, and him oifly, before me, in spite of 
a terrified gesture from the governor, I walked up to the bed, and, 
sitting down beside him, put my arm round his neck. 

“ George ! George ! Dear old friend ! ” I said. “ 0, George, 
my boy, has it come to this ? ” 


426 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


I don’t want to be instructed in my duty. I know what my duty 
was on that occasion as well as any man. My duty as a citizen and 
a magistrate was to stand at the further end of the cell, and give 
this hardened criminal a moral lecture, showing how honesty and 
virtue, as in my case, had led to wealth and honour, and how 
yielding to one’s passions had led to disgrace and infamy, as in 
his. That was my duty, I allow. But then, you see, I didn’t do 
my duty. I had a certain tender feeling about my stomach which 
prevented me from doing it. So I only hung there, with my arm 
round his neck, and said, from time to time, “ 0 George, George! ” 
like a fool. 

He put his two hands upon my shoulders, so that his fetters 
hung across my breast, and he looked me in the face. Then he 
said, after a time, “What! Hamlyn? Old Jeff Hamlyn ! The 
only man I ever knew that I didn’t quarrel with ! Come to see 
me now, eh ? Jeff, old boy, I’m to be hung to-morrow.” 

“ I know it,” I said. “ And I came to ask you if I could do 
anything for you. For the sake of dear old Devon, George.” 

“ Ajiything you like, old Jeff,” he said, with a laugh, “ so long 
as you don’t get me reprieved. If I get loose again, lad, I’d do 
worse than I ever did yet, believe me. I’ve piled up a tolerable 
heap of wickedness as it is, though. I’ve murdered my own son, 
Jeff. Do you know that ? ” 

I answered — “ Yes ; I know that, George ; but that was an 
accident. You did not know who he was.” 

“ He came at me to take my life,” said Hawker. “ And I tell 
you, as a man who goes out to be hung to-morrow, that, if I had 
guessed who he was, I’d have blown my own brains out to save him 
from the crime of killing me. Who is that man ? ” 

“ Don’t you remember him ? ” I said. “ Major Buckley.” 

The Major came fonvard, and held out his hand to George 
Hawker. “ You are now,” he said, “ like a dead man to me. 
You die to-morrow ; and you know it ; and face it like a man. I 
come to ask you to forgive me anything you may have to forgive. 
I have been your enemy since I first saw you ; but I have been an 
honest and open enemy ; and now I am your enemy no longer. I 
ask you to shake hands with me. I have been warned not to 
come within arm’s length of you, chained as you are. But I am 
not afraid of you.” 

The Major came and sat on the bed-place beside him. 

“ As for that little animal,” said George Hawker, pointing to the 
governor, as he stood at the further end of the cell, “if he comes 
within reach of me. I’ll beat his useless little brains out against the 
wall, and he knows it. He was right to caution you not to come 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


427 


too near me. I nearly killed a man yesterday ; and to-morrow, 

when they come to lead me out But, with regard to you. Major 

Buckley, the case is different. Do you know I should be rather 
sorry to tackle you ; I’m afraid you would be too heavy for me. 
As to my having anything to forgive. Major, I don’t know that 
there is anything. If there is, let me tell you that I feel more 
kind and hearty toward you and Hamlyn for coming to me like 
this to-day, than I’ve felt toward any man this twenty year. By- 
the-bye, let no man go to the gaUows without clearing himself as 
far as he may. Do you know that I set on that red-haired villain. 
Moody, to throttle Bill Lee, because I hadn’t pluck to do it 
myseff.” 

“ Poor Lee,” said the Major. 

“ Poor devil,” said Hawker. “ Why that man had gone through 
every sort of viUainy, from ” (so and so up to so and so, he said ; 
I shall not particularise) “ before my beard was grown. Why that 
man laid such plots and snares for me when I was a lad, that a 
bishop could not have escaped. He egged me on to forge my o^\^l 
father’s name. He drove me on to ruin. And now, because it 
suited his purpose to turn honest, and act as faithful domestic to 
my wife for twenty years, he is mourned for as an exemplary cha- 
racter, and I go to the gallows. He was a meaner viUain than 
ever I was.” 

George,” I asked, “ have you any message for your 
wife ? ” 

“ Only this,” he said ; “ tell her I always liked her pretty face, 
and I’m sorry I brought disgrace upon her. Through all my ras- 
calities, old Jeff, I swear to you that I respected and liked her to the 
last. I tried to see her last year, only to tell her that she needn’t 
be afraid of me , and should treat me as a dead man ; but she and 
her blessed pig-headed lover, Tom Troubridge, made such knife 
and pistol work of it, that I never got the chance of saying the word 
I wanted. She’d have saved herself much trouble if she hadn’t 
acted so much like a frightened fool. I never meant her any 
harm. You may teU her all this if you judge right, but I leave it 
to you. Time’s up, I see. I ain’t so much of a coward, am I, 
Jeff? Good-bye, old lad, good-bye.” 

That was the last we saw of him ; the next morning he was 
executed with four of his comrades. But now the Major and I, 
leaving him, went off again into the street, into the rain and the 
furious wind, to beat up against it for our hotel. Neither spoke a 
word till we came to a corner in George Street, nearest the wharf ; 
and then the Major turned back upon me suddenly, and I thought 
he had been unable to face the terrible gust which came sweeping 


423 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


up from the harbour : but it was not so. He had turned on 
purpose, and putting his hands upon my shoulders, he said, — 

“ Hamlyn, Hamlyn, you have taught me a lesson.” 

“I suppose so,” I said. “I have shown you what a fool a 
tender-hearted soft-headed fellow may make of himself by yielding 
to his impulses. But I have a defence to offer, my dear sir, the 
best of excuses, the only real excuse existing in this world. I 
couldn’t help it.” 

“ I don’t mean that, Hamlyn,” he answered. “ The lesson you 
have taught me is a very different one. You have taught me that 
there are bright points in the worst man’s character, a train of good 
feeling which no tact can bring out, but yet which some human 
spark of feeling may light. Here is this man Hawker, of whom 
we heard that he was dangerous to approach, and whom the good 
Chaplain was forced to pray for and exhort from a safe distance. 
The man for whose death, till ten minutes ago, I was rejoicing. 
The man I thought lost, and beyond hope. Yet you, by one burst 
of unpremeditated folly, by one piece of silly sentimentality, by 
ignoring the man’s later life, and carrying him back in imagination 
to his old schoolboy days, have done more than our good old friend 
the Chaplain could have done without your assistance. There is a 
spark of the Divine in the worst of men, if you can only find it.” 

In spite of the Major’s parliamentary and didactic way of speak- 
ing, I saw there was truth at the bottom of what he said, and 
that he meant kindly to me, and to the poor fellow who was even 
now among the dead ; so instead of arguing with him, I took his 
arm, and we fought homewards together through the driving rain. 

Imagine three months to have passed. That stormy spring 
had changed into a placid, burning summer. The busy shearing - 
time was past ; the noisy shearers were dispersed, heaven knows 
where (most of them probably suffering from a shortness of cash, 
complicated with delirium tremens). The grass in the plains had 
changed from green to dull grey ; the river had changed his 
hoarse roar for a sleepy murmur, as though too lazy to quarrel 
with his boulders in such weather. A hot dull haze was over 
forest and mountain. The snow had perspired till it showed long 
black streaks on the highest eminences. In short, summer had 
come with a vengeance ; every one felt hot, idle, and thirsty, and 
“ there was nothing doing.” 

Now that broad cool verandah of Captain Brentwood’s, with its 
deep recesses of shadow, was a place not to be lightly spoken of. 
Any man once getting footing there, and leaving it, except on 
compulsion, would show himself of weak mind. Any man once 
comfortably settled there in an easy chair, who fetched anything 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


429 


for himself when he could get any one else to fetch it for him, 
would show himself, in my opinion, a man of weak mind. One 
thing only w^as wanted to make it perfect, and that was niggers. 
To the winds with “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “ Dred ” after it, 
in a hot wind ! What can an active-minded, self-helpful lady like 
Mrs. Stowe, freezing up there in Connecticut, obliged to do some- 
thing to keep herself warm, — what can she, I ask, know about 
the requirements of a southern gentleman when the thermometer 
stands at 125° in the shade ? Pish ! Does she know the 
exertion required for cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north 
wind ? No ! Does she know the amount of perspiration and 
anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of Bass in 
January ? Does she know the physical prostration which is 
caused by breaking up two lumps of hard white sugar in a 
pawnee before a thunderstorm ? No, she doesn’t, or she would 
cry out for niggers with the best of us ! AVhen the thermometer 
gets over 100° in the shade, all men would have slaves if they 
were allowed. An Anglo-Saxon conscience will not, save in rare 
instances, hear a higher average heat than 95°. 

]3ut about this verandah. It was the model and tj^pe of all 
verandahs. It was made originally by the Irish family, the 
Donovans, before spoken of; and, like all Irish-made things, was 
nobly conceived, beautifully carried out, and then left to take care 
of itself, so that when Alice came into possession, she found it a 
neglected mine of rare creepers run wild. Here, for the first 
time, I saw the exquisite crimson passion-flower,* then a great 
rarity. Here, too, the native passion-flower, scarlet and orange, 
was tangled up with the common purple sarsaparilla and the 
English honeysuckle and jessamine. 

In this verandah, one blazing morning, sat Mrs. Buckley and 
Alice making believe to work. Mrs. Buckley really was doing 
something. Alice sat with her hands fallen on her lap, so still 
and so beautiful, that she might then and there have been photo- 
graphed off by some enterprising artist, and exhibited in the print 
shops as “ Argia, Goddess of Laziness.” 

They were not alone, however. Across the very coolest, darkest 
corner was swung a hammock, looking at which you might per- 
ceive two hands elevating a green paper-covered pamphlet, as 
though the owner were reading — the aforesaid -owner, how'ever, 
being entirely invisible, only proving his existence by certain 
bulges and angles in the canvas of the hammock. 

Now having made a nice little mystery as to who it was lying 
there, I will proceed to solve it. A burst of laughter came from 
* Passiflor . Loudonia, I believe. 


430 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OP 


the hidden man, so uproarious and violent, that the hammock- 
strings strained and shook, and the magpie, waking up from a 
sound sleep, cursed and swore in a manner fearful to hear. 

“ My dearest Jim ! ” said Alice, rousing herself, “ What is the 
matter with you ? ” 

Jim read aloud the immortal battle of the two editors, with the 
carpet bag and the fire-shovel, in “ Pickwick,” and, ere he had 
half done, Alice and Mrs. Bucldey had mingled their laughter 
with his, quite as heartily, if not so loudly. 

“ Hallo ! ” said Jim, “ here’s a nuisance ! There’s no more of 
it. Alice, have you got any more ? ” 

“ That is all, Jim. The other numbers will come by the next 
mail.” 

How tiresome ! I suppose the governor is pretty sure to be 
home to-night. He can’t be away much longer.” 

“ Don’t be impatient, my dear,” said Alice. “ How is your 
leg ? ” 

Please remember that Jim’s leg was broken in the late wars, 
and, as yet, hardly well. 

“ Oh, it’s a good deal better. Heigho ! This is very dull.” 

“ Thank you, James ! ” said Mrs. Buckley. “Dear me ! the 
heat gets greater every day. If they are on the road, I hope they 
won’t hurry themselves.” 

Our old friends were just now disposed in the following man- 
ner : — 

The Major was at home. Mary Hawker was staying with him. 
Doctor Mulhaus and Halbert staying at Major Buckley’s, while 
Captain Brentwood was away with Sam and Tom Troubridge to 
Sydney ; and, having been absent some weeks, had been expected 
home now for a day or two. This was the day they came home, 
riding slowly up to the porch about five o’clock. 

When all greetings were done, and they were sat down beside 
the others, Jim opened the ball by asking, “ What news, father ? ” 

“ What a particularly foolish question ! ” said the Captain. 
“ Why, you’U get it all in time — none the quicker for being im- 
patient. May be, also, when you hear some of the news, you 
won’t like it ! ” 

“Oh, indeed ! ” said Jim. 

“ I have a letter for you here, from the Commander-in-Chief. 
You are appointed to the 3 — th Regiment, at present quartered in 
India.” 

Alice looked at him quickly as she heard this, and, as a natural 
consequence, Sam looked too. They had expected that he would 
have hurra’d aloud, or thrown up his hat, or danced about when 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


431 


lie heard of it. But no ; he only sat bolt upright in his hammock, 
tliough his face flushed scarlet, and his eyes glistened strangely. 

His father looked at him an instant, and then continued, — 

“ Six months’ leave of absence procured at the same time, 
which will give you about three months more at home. So you 
see you now possess the inestimable privilege of wearing a red 
coat ; and what is still better, of getting a hole made in it ; for 
there is great trouble threatening with the Afighans and Beloochs, 
and the chances are that you will smell powder before you are up 
in your regimental duties. Under which circumstances I shall 
take the liberty of requesting that you inform yourself on these 
points under my direction, for I dont’t want you to join your 
regiment in the position of any other booby. Have the goodness 
to lie down again and not excite yourself. You have anticipated 
this some tinm. Surely it is not necessary for you to cry about it 
like a great girl.” 

But that night, after dark, when Sam and Alice were taking 
one of those agreeable nocturnal walks, which all young lovers are 
prone to, they came smoothly gliding over the lawn close up to 
the house, and then, unseen and unheard, they saw Captain 
Brentwood with his arm round Jim’s neck, and heard him say, — 

“ 0 James.! James ! why did you want to leave me ? ” 

And Jim answered, ‘‘Father, I didn’t know. I didn’t know 
my own mind. But I can’t call hack now.” 

Sam and Alice slipt hack again, and continued their walk. Let 
us hear what conversation they had been holding together before 
this little interruption. 

“Alice, my darling, my love, you are more beautiful than ever! ” 

“ Thanks to your absence, my dear Sam. You see how well I 
thrive without you.” 

“ Then when we are ” 

“ Well? ” said Alice. For this was eight o’clock in the even- 
ing, you know, and the moon being four days past the full, it was 
pitch dark. “ Well ? ” says she. 

“ When we are married,” says Sam, audaciously, “I suppose 
you will pine away to nothing.” 

“Good gracious me!” she answered. “Married? Why 
surely we are well enough as we are.” 

“ Most excellently well, my darling,” said Sam, “ I wish it 
could last for ever.” 

“ Oh, indeed ! ” said Alice, almost inaudibly though. 

“Alice, my love,” said Sam, “have you thought of one 
thing ? Have you thought that I must make a start in life for 
myself? ” 


482 


THE EECOLLECnONS OF 


No, she hadn’t thought of that. Didn’t see why Baroona 
wasn’t good enough for him. 

“ My dear ! ” he said. “ Baroona is a line property, but it is 
not mine. I want money for a set purpose. For a glorious pur- 
pose, my love ! I will not tell you yet, not for years perhaps, 
what that purpose is. But I want fifty thousand pounds of my 
own. And fifty thousand pounds I will have.” 

Good gracious ! What an avaricious creature. Such a quan- 
tity of money. And so she wasn’t to hear what he was going to 
do with it, for ever so many years. Wouldn’t he tell her now ? 
She would so like to know. Would nothing induce him ? 

Yes, there was something. Nay, what harm ! Only an honest 
lover’s kiss, among the ripening grapes. In the dark, you say. 
My dear madam, you would not have them kiss one another in 
broad day, with the cook watching them out of the kitchen 
window ? 

“ Alice,” he said, “ I have had one object before me from my 
boyhood, and since you told me that I was to be your husband, 
that object has grown from a vague intention to a fixed purpose. 
Alice, I want to buy back the acres of my forefathers ; I wish, I 
intend, that another Buckley shall he the master of Clere, and 
that you shall he his wife.” 

“Sam, my love ! ” she said, turning on him suddenly. “What 
a magnificent idea. Is it possible ? ” 

“Easy,” said Sam. “My father could do it, hut will not. 
He and my mother have severed every tie with the old country, 
and it would be at their time of life only painful to go hack to the 
old scenes and interests. But with me it is difterent. Think of 
you and I taking the place we are entitled to by birth and educa- 
tion, in the splendid society of that noble island. Don’t let me 
hear all that balderdash about the founding of new empires. 
Empires take too long in growing for me. What honours, what 
society, has this little colony to give, compared to those open to a 
fourth-rate gentleman in England ? I want to be a real English- 
man, not half a one. I want to throw in my lot heart and hand 
with the greatest nation in the world. I don’t want to he young 
Sam Buckley of Baroona. I want to he the Buckley of Clere. 
Is not that a noble ambition ? ” 

“ My whole soul goes with you, Sam,” said Alice. “ My whole 
heart and soul. Let us consult, and see how this is to be done.” 

“ This is the way the thing stands,” said Sam. “ The house 
and park at Clere, were sold by my father for 12,000Z. to a 
brewer. Since then, this brewer, a most excellent fellow by all 
accounts, has bought back, acre by acre, nearly half the old 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


433 


original property as it existed in my great grandfather’s time, so 
that now Clere must be worth fifty thousand pounds at least. 
This man’s children are all dead ; and as far as Captain Brentwood 
has been able to find out for me, no one knows exactly how the 
property is going. The present owner is the same age as my 
father ; and at his death, should an advantageous offer be made, 
there would be a good chance of getting the heirs to sell the 
property. We should have to pay very highly for it, but 
consider what a position we should buy with it. The county 
would receive us with open arms. That is all I know at 
present.” 

“ A noble idea,” said Alice, “ and well considered. Now what 
are you going to do ? ” 

“ Have you heard tell yet,” said Sam, “ of the new country to 
the north, they call the Darling Downs ? ” 

“ I have heard of it from Burnside the cattle dealer. He 
describes it as a paradise of wealth.” 

“ He is right. When you get through the Cypress, the plains 
are endless. It is undoubtedly the finest piece of country found 
yet. Now do you know Tom Troubridge ? ” 

“ Slightly enough,” said Alice, laughing. 

“Well,” said Sam. “You know he went to Sydney with us, 
and before he had been three days there he came to me full of this 
Darling Down country. Quite mad about it in fact. And in the 
end he said : ‘ Sam, what money have you got ? ’ I said that 
my father had promised me seven thousand pounds for a certain 
purpose, and that I had come to town partly to look for an invest- 
ment. He said, ‘ Be my partner ; ’ and I said, ‘ What for ? ’ 
‘ Darling Downs,’ he said. And I said I was only too highly 
honoured by such a mark of confidence from such a man, and that 
I closed witli his offer at once. To make a long matter short, ho 
is off* to the new country to take up ground under the name of 
Troubridge and Buckley. There ! ” 

“ But oughtn’t you to have gone up with him, Sam ? ” 

“ I proposed to do so, as a matter of course,” said Sam. “ But 
what do you think he said ? ’ ’ 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ He gave me a great slap on the back,” said Sam ; “ and, 
said he, ‘ Go home, my old lad, marry your wife, and fetch her up 
to keep house.’ That’s what he said. And now, my own love, 
my darling, will you tell me, am I to go up alone, and wait for 
you ; or will you come up, and make a happy home for me in that 
dreary desert ? Will you leave your home, and come away with 
me into the grey hot plains of the west ? ’ ’ 

29 


434 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


“I have no home in future, Sam,” she said, “ hut where you 
are, and I will gladly go with you to the world’s end.” 

And so that matter was settled. 

And now Sam disclosed to her that a visitor was expected at the 
station in about a fortnight or three weeks ; and he was no less a 
person than our old friend the dean, Frank Maherly. And then 
he went to ask, did she think that she could manage by that time 
to — eh ? Such an excellent opportunity, you know ; seemed 
almost as if his visit had been arranged ; which, between you and 
I, it had. 

She thought it wildly possible, if there was any real necessity 
for it. And after this they went in ; and Alice went into her bed- 
room. 

‘‘ And what have you been doing out there with Alice all this 
time, eh ? ” asked the Captain. 

“ I’ve been asking a question, sir.” 

“You must have put it in a pretty long form. What sort of an 
answer did you get ? ” 

“ I got ‘ yes ’ for an answer, sir.” 

“Ah, well! Mrs. Buckley, can you lend Baroona to a new 
married couple for a few weeks, do you think ? There is plenty 
of room for you here.” 

And then into Mrs. Bu6kley’s astonished ear all the new plans 
were poured. She heard that Sam and Alice were to be married 
in a fortnight, and that Sam had gone into partnership with Tom 
Trouhridge. 

“ Stop there,” she said ; “ not too much at once. What becomes 
of Mary Hawker ? ’ ’ 

“ She is left at Toonarhin, with an overseer, for the present.” 

“ And when,” she asked, “ shall you leave us, Sam ? ” 

“ Oh, in a couple of months, I suppose. I must give Tom time 
to get a house up before I go and join him. What a convenient 
thing a partner like that is, eh ? ” 

“ Oh, hy-the-hye, Mrs. Buckley,” said Captain Brentwood, “what 
do you make of this letter ? ’ ’ 

He produced a broad thick letter, directed in a hold running 
hand, 

“ Major Buckley, 

“Baroona, Combermere County, 

“ Gipps-land. 

“ If absent, to he left with the nearest magistrate, and a receipt 
taken for it.” 

“ How very strange,” said Mrs. Buckley, turning it over. 
“ Where did you get it ? ” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


435 


^‘Sergeant Jackson asked me, as nearest magistrate, to take 
charge of it ; and so I did. It has been forwarded by orderly 
from Sydney.” 

‘‘ And the Governor’s private seal, too,” said Mrs. Buckley. 
“ I don t know when my curiosity has been so painfully excited. 
Put it on the chimney-piece, Sam ; let us gaze on the outside, 
even if we are denied to see the inside. I wonder if your father 
will come to-night? ” 

“No; getting too late,” said Sam. “Evidently Halbert and 
the Doctor have found themselves there during their ride, and are 
keeping him and Mrs. Hawker company. They will all three he 
over to-morrow morning, depend on it.” 

“ What a really good fellow that Halbert is,” said Captain 
Brentwood. “ One of the best companions I ever met. I wish 
his spirits would improve with his health. A sensitive fellow like 
him is apt not to recover from a blow like his.” 

“ What blow ? ” said Mrs. Buckley. 

“ Did you never hear? ” said the Captain. “ The girl he was 
going to be married to, got drowned coming out to him in the 
Assam.” 


' CHAPTER XLV. 

IN WHICH THERE ARE SOME ASTONISHING REVELATIONS WITH 
REGARD TO DR. MULHAUS AND CAPTAIN DESBOROUGH. 

At ten o’clock the next morning arrived the Major, the Doctor, 
and Halbert ; and the first notice they had of it was the Doctor’s 
voice in the passage, evidently in a great state of excitement. 

“ No more the common bower-bird than you, sir ; a new species. 
His eyes are red instead of blue, and the whole plumage is lighter. 
I will call it after you, my dear Major.” 

You have got to shoot him first,” said the Major. 

“I’ll soon do that,” said the Doctor, bursting into the room- 
door. “ How do you do, all of you ? Sam, glad to see you back 
again. Brentwood, you are welcome to your own house. Get me 
your gun — where is it? ” 

“ In my bedroom,” said the Captain. 

The Doctor went off after it. He reappeared again to complain 
that the caps would not fit ; but, being satisfied on that score, he 
disappeared down the garden, on murderous thoughts intent. 

Sam got his father away into the verandah, and told him all his 


436 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


plans. I need hardly say that they met with the Major’s entire 
approval. All his plans, I said ; no, not all. Sam never hinted 
at the end and object of all his endeavours ; he never said a word 
about his repurchase of Clere. The Major had no more idea that 
Sam had ever thought of such a thing, or had been making 
inquiries, than had the owner of Clere himself. 

“ Sam, my dear boy,” said he, “I am very sorry to lose you, 
and we shall have but a dull time of it henceforth ; but I am sure 
it is good for a man to go out into the world by himself ” (and all 
that sort of thing). “ When you are gone, Brentwood and I mean 
to live together to console one another.” 

“ My dear, are you coming in ? ” said Mrs. Buckley. “ Here 
is a letter for you, which I ought to have given you before.” 

The Major went in and received the mysterious epistle which 
the Captain had brought the night before. When he saw it he 
whistled. 

They sat waiting to know the contents. He was provokingly 
long in opening it, and when he did, he said nothing, but read it 
over twice, with a lengthening visage. Now also it became appa- 
rent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of 
which the Major having looked, put it in his pocket, and turning 
round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began 
drumming against the fender with his foot, musingly. 

A more aggravating course of proceeding he could not have 
resorted to. Here they were all dying of curiosity, and not a 
word did he seem inclined to answer. At last, Mrs. Buckley, not 
able to hold out any longer, said, — 

“ From the Governor, was it not, my love ? ” 

“ Yes,” he said, “ from the Governor. And very important 
too,” and then relapsed into silence. 

Matters were worse than ever. But after a few minutes he 
turned round to them suddenly, and said, — 

“ You have heard of Baron Landstein ? ” 

“ What,” said Sam, “ the man that the Doctor’s always abusing 
so ? Yes, I know all about him, of course.” 

“ The noble Landstein,” said Alice. “ In spite of the Doctor’s 
abuse he is a great favourite of mine. How well he seems to have 
behaved at Jena with those two Landwehr regiments.” 

“ Landsturm, my love,” said the Major. 

“ Yes, Landsturm, I mean. I wonder if he is still alive, or 
whether he died of his wounds.” 

“ The Doctor,” said Sam, “ always speaks of him as dead.” 

“He is not only alive,” said the Major, “ but he is coming 
here. He will be here to-day. He may come any minute.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


437 


“ What ! the great Laiidsteiii? ” said Sam. 

“ The same man,” said the Major. 

“ The Doctor will have a quarrel with him, father. He is always 
abusing him. He says he lost the battle of Jena, or something.” 

“ Be quiet, Sam, and don’t talk. Watch what follows.” 

The Doctor was seen hurrying up the garden-walk. He put 
down his gun outside, and bursting open the glass door, stepped 
into the room, holding aloft a black bird, freshly killed, and look- 
ing round him for applause. 

“ There ! ” he said ; “I told you so.” 

The Major walked across the room, and put a letter in his hand, 
the one w'hich was enclosed in the mysterious epistle before men- 
tioned. “ Baron,” he said, “ here is a letter for you.” 

The Doctor looked round as one would who had received a blow, 
and knew not who smote him. He took the letter, and went into 
the window to read it. 

No one spoke a word. “ This, then, my good old tutor,” 
thought Sam, ‘‘turns out to be the great Landstein. Save us, 
what a piece of romance.” But, though he thought this, he never- 
said anything, and catching Alice’s eye, followed it to the window. 
There, leaning against the glass, his face buried in his hands, and 
his broad back shaking with emotion, stood Doctor Mulhaus. 
Alas ! no. Our kindly, good, hearty, learned, irritable, but 
dearly -beloved friend, is no more. There never was such a man 
in reality ; but in his place stands Baron von Landstein of the 
Niederwald. 

What the contents of the Doctor’s (I must still call him so) 
letter, I cannot tell you. But I have seen the letter which Major 
Buckley received enclosing it, and I can give it you word for word. 
It is from the Governor himself, and runs thus : — 

“ My dear Major, 

“ I am informed that the famous Baron von Landstein has 
been living in your house for some years, under the name of Dr. 
Mulhaus. In fact, I believe he is a partner of yours. I therefore 
send the enclosed under cover to you, and when I tell you that it 
lias been forwarded to me through the Foreign Office, and the 
Colonial Office, and is, in point of fact, an autograph letter from 

the King of P to the Baron, I am sure that you will ensuie 

its safe delivery. 

“ The Secretary is completely ‘ fixed ’ with his estimates. The 
salaries for the Supreme Court Office are thrown out. He must 
resign. Do next election send us a couple of moderates. 

“ Yours, &c., G. G.” 


43S 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


This was the Major’s letter. But the Doctor stood still there, 
moved more deeply than any had seen him before, while Alice and 
Sam looked at one another in blank astonishment. 

At length he turned and spoke, but not to them, to the empty 
air. Spoke as one aroused from a trance. Things hard to under- 
stand, yet having some thread of sense in them too. 

“ So he has sent for me,” he said, “ when it seems that he may 
have some use for me. So the old man is likely to go at last, and 
we are to have the golden age again. If talking could do it, 
assuredly we should. He has noble instincts, this young fellow, 

and some sense. He has sent for me. If H , and B , 

and Von U , and myself can but get his ear ! 

“ Oh, Rhineland ! my own beloved Rhineland, shall I see you 
again ? Shall I sit once more in my own grey castle, among the 
vineyards, above the broad gleaming river, and hear the noises 
from the town come floating softly up the hillside ! I w'onder are 
there any left who will remember ” 

He took two short turns through the room, and then he turned 
and spoke to them again, looking all the time at Sam. 

“ I am the Baron von Landstein. The very man we have so 
often talked of, and whose character we have so freely discussed. 
When the French attacked us, I threw myself into the foremost 
ranks of my countrymen, and followed the Queen with two regi- 
ments which I had raised almost entirely myself. 

“I fled away from the blood-red sun of Jena, wounded and 
desperate. ‘ That sun,’ I thought, ‘ has set on the ruins of 
Great Frederick’s kingdom. Prussia is a province of France ; 
what can happen worse than this ? I will crawl home to my castle 
and die.’ 

“ I had no castle to crawl to. My brother, he who hung upon 
the same breast with me, he who learnt his first prayer beside me, 
he whom I loved and trusted above all other men, had turned 
traitor, had sold himself to the French, had deceived my bride 
that was to be, and seized my castle. 

“ I fled to England, to Drumston, Major. I had some know- 
ledge of physic, and called myself a doctor. I threw myselR into 
the happy English domestic life which I found there, and soon got 
around me men and women whom I loved full well. 

“ Old John Thornton and his sister knew my secret, as did 
Lord Crediton ; but they kept it well, and by degrees I began to 
hope that I would begin a new life as a useful village apothecary, 
and forget for ever the turmoils of politics. 

“ Then you know what happened. There was an Exodus. All 
those I had got to love, arose, in the manner of their nation, and 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


439 


went to the other end of the earth, so that one night I was left 
alone on the cliff at Plymouth, watching' a ship which was hearing 
away all that was left me to love in the world. 

“ I went to Prussia. I found my brother had made good use 
of his prosperity, and slandered me to the King. His old treachery 
seemed forgotten, and he was high in power. The King, for whom 
I had suffered so much, received me coldly, and leaving the palace, 
I spoke to my brother, and said, — ‘ Send me so much yearly, and 
keep the rest for a time.’ And then I followed you. Major, out 
here. 

“ Shall I tell you any more, Sam ? ” 

“No! ” said Sam, smiting his fist upon the table. “I can 
tell the rest, Baron, to those who want to know it. I can tell 
of ten years’ patient kindness towards myself. I can tell — I can 
tell ” 

Sam was the worst orator in the world. He broke down, sir. 
He knew what he meant very well ; and so I hope do you, reader, 
hut he couldn’t say it. He had done what many of us do, tried 
to make a fine speech when his heart was full, and so he failed. 

But Alice didn’t fail, — not she, though she never spoke a word. 
She folded up her work ; and going up to the good old man, took 
both his hands in hers and kissed him on both his cheeks. A fine 
piece of rhetorical action, wasn’t it ? And then they all crowded 
round him, and shook hands with him, and kissed him, and 
God-blessed him, for their kind, true old friend ; and prayed that 
every blessing might light upon his noble head, till he passed 
through them speechless and wandered away to his old friend, the 
river. 

About the middle of this week, there arrived two of our former 
friends, — Frank Maherly and Captain Deshorough, riding side by 
side. The Elders, with the Doctor, were outside, and detained 
the Dean, talking to him and bidding him welcome. But Captain 
Deshorough, passing in, came into the room where were assembled 
Alice, Sam, and Jim, who gave him a most vociferous greeting. 

They saw in a moment that there was some fun in the wind. 
They knew, by experience, that when Deshorough’s eyes twinkled 
like that, some absurdity was preparing, though they were quite 
unprepared for the mixture of reality and nonsense which followed. 

“ Pace,” said Deshorough, in his affected Irish accent, “be on 
this house, and all in it. The top of the morning to ye all.” 

“ Now,” said Alice, “ we are going to have some fun ; Captain 
Deshorough has got his brogue on.” 

“ Ye’ll have some fun directly, Misc Brentwood,” he said. 


440 


THE llECOLLECTIONS OF 


“But there’s some serious, sober earnest to come first. My 
cousin, Slievedonad, is dead.” 

‘ ‘ Lord Slievedonad ? ’ ’ 

“ The same. That small Viscount is at this moment in pur . 

God forgive me, and him too.’ 

“ Poor fellow ! ” 

“ That’s just half. My uncle Lord Covetown was taken with a 
fit when he heard of it, and is gone after him, and the Lord forgive 
him too. He turned me, his own brother’s son, out into the world 
with half an education, to sink or swim ; and never a kind word 
did he or his son ever give me in their lives. It must have broken 
the old man’s heart to think how the estate would go. But as I 
said before, God forgive him.” 

“You must feel his loss. Captain Desborough,” said Alice. “I 
am very sorry for you.” 

“Ahem ! my dear young lady, you don’t seem to know how this 
ends.” 

“ Why, no,” said Alice, looking up wonderingly ; “ I do not.” 

“ Why, it ends in this,” said Desborough ; “ that I myself am 
Earl of Covetown, Viscount Slievedonad, and Baron Avoca, with , 
twenty thousand a year, me darlin, the laste penny ; see to there 
now ! ” 

“ Brogue again,” said Alice. “ Are you joking ? ” 

“True enough,” said Desborough. “I had a letter from my 
grandmother, the Dowager (she that lost the dog), only this very 
day. And there’s a thousand pounds paid into the Bank of 
New South Wales to my account. Pretty good proof that last, 
eh?” 

“ My dear lord,” said Alice, “I congratulate you most heartily. 
All the world are turning out to be noblemen. I should not be 
surprised to find that I am a duchess myself.” 

“ It rests with you. Miss Brentwood,” said Desborough, with 
a wicked glance at Sam, “to be a countess. I now formally 
make you an offer of me hand and heart. Oh ! tell me. Miss 

Brentwood, will ye be Mrs. Mars I beg pardon. Countess of 

Covetovm ? ” 

“ No, I thank you, my lord,” said Alice, laughing and blushing. 

“ I am afraid I must decline.” 

“ I was afraid ye would,” said Lord Covetovm. “ I had heard - 
that a great six-foot villain had been trifling with your affections, 
so I came prepared for a refusal. Came prepared with this. 
Miss Brentwood, which I pray you to accept ; shall I be too bold 
if I say, as a wedding present, from one of your most sincere 
admirers.” 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


441 


He produced a jewel case, and took from it a bracelet, at the 
sight of which Alice gave an honest womanly cry of delight. 
And well she might, for the bauble cost 150/.. It was a bracelet 
of gold, representing a snake. Half-way up the reptile’s back 
began a row of sapphires, getting larger towards the neck, each 
of which was surrounded by small emeralds. The back of the 
head contained a noble brilliant, and the eyes were two rubies. 
Altogether, a thorough specimen of Irish extravagance and good 
taste. 

“ Can you clasp it on for her, Sam ? ” said Lord Coveto wn. 

“ Oh, my lord, I ought not to accept such a princely present ! ” 
said Alice. 

“ Look here. Miss Brentwood,” said Covetown, laying his hand 
on Sam’s shoulder. ‘‘ I find that the noblest and best fellow I 
know is going to marry the handsomest woman, saving your 
presence, that I ever saw. I myself have just come into an 
earldom, and twenty thousand a-year; and if, under these cir- 
cumstances, I mapi’t make that woman a handsome present, why 
then the deuce is in it, you know. Sam, my boy, your hand. 
Jim, your hand, my lad. May you be as good a soldier as your 
father.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Jim. “ So you’re an earl, are you ? What does 
it feel like, eh ? Ho you feel the blue blood of a hundred sires 
coursing in your veins ? Ho you feel the hereditary class preju- 
dices of the Norman aristocracy cutting you off from the sympa- 
thies of the inferior classes, and raising you above the hopes and 
fears of the masses ? How very comical it must be ! So you are 
going to sit among the big- wigs in the House of Lords. I hope 
you won’t forget yourself, and cry ‘ Faug a Ballagh,’ when one of 
the bishops rises to speak. And whatever you do, don’t sing, 

‘ Gama crem’ah cruiskeen ’ in the lobby.” 

“ My dear fellow,” said he, “I am not in the House of Lords 
at all. Only an Irish peer. I intend to get into the Commons 
though, and produce a sensation by introducing the Australian 
‘ Co’ee ’ into the seat of British Legislature.” 

How long these four would have gone on talking unutterable 
nonsense, no man can say. But Frank Maberly coining in, greeted 
them courteously, and changed the conversation. 

Poor Frank ! Hard and incessant work was beginning to tell 
on that noble frame, and the hard marked features were getting 
more hard and marked year by year. Yet, in spite of the deep 
lines that now furrowed that kindly face, those who knew it best, 
said that it grew more beautiful than it had ever been before. As 
that magnificent physique began to fail, the noble soul within 


442 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


began to show clearer through its earthly tenement. That noble 
soul was getting purified and ready for what happened but a few 
years after this in Patagonia. When we heard that that man had 
earned the crown of glory, and had been thought worthy to sit 
beside Stephen and Paul in the Kingdom ; none of us wept for 
him, or mourned. It seemed such a fitting reward for such a pure j 
and noble life. But even now, when I wake in the night, I see 
him before me as he was described in the last scene by the only 
suiwivor. Felled down upon the sand, with his arms before his 
eyes, crying out, as the spears struck him one after another, 

“ Lord, forgive them, they know not what they do ! ” 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

IN WHICH SAM MEETS WITH A SERIOUS ACCIDENT, AND GETS 
CRIPPLED FOR LIFE. 

What morning is this, when Sam, waking from silver dreams to a 
golden reality, turns over in his bed and looks out of the open 
glass door ; at dog Rover, propped up against the lintel, chopping 
at the early flies ; at the flower-garden, dark and dewy ; at the 
black wall of forest beyond, in which the magpies were beginning 
to pipe cheerily ; at the blessed dawn which was behind and above 
it, shooting long rays of primrose and crimson half-way up the 
zenith ; hearing the sleepy ceaseless crawling of the river over the 
shingle bars ; hearing the booming of the cattle-herds. far over the 
plain ; hearing the chirrup of the grasshopper among the rasp- 
berries, the chirr of the cicada among the wattles — what happy 
morning is this ? Is it the Sabbath ? 

Ah, no ! the Sabbath was yesterday. This is his wedding 
morn. 

My dear brother bachelor, do you remember those old first-love 
sensations, or have you got too old, and too fat ? Do you remem- 
ber the night when you parted from her on the bridge by the lock, 
the night before her father wrote to you and forbade you the 
house ? Have you got the rose she gave you there ? Is it in 
your Bible, brother ? Do you remember the months that followed 
— months of mad grief and wild yearning, till the yearning grew 
less — less wild — and the grief less desperate ; and then, worst of 
all, the degrading consciousness that you were, in spite of yourself, 
getting rid of your love, and that she was not to you as she had 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


443 


been ? Do you remember all this ? When you come across the 
rose in your Bible, do you feel that you would give all the honour 
and wealth of the world to feel again those happy, wretched old 
sensations ? Do you not say tliat this world has nothing to give 
in comparison to that ? 

Not this world, I believe. You and I can never feel that again. 
So let us make up our minds to it — it is dead. In God’s name 
don’t let us try to galvanise an old corpse, which may rise upon us 
hideous, and scare us to the lower pit. Let us be content as we 
are. Let us read that Book we spoke of just now with the rose in 
it, and imitate the Perfect Man there spoken of, who was crucified 
1800 years ago, believing, like Him, that all men are our brothers, 
and acting up to it. And then. Lord knows what may be in store 
for us. 

Here’s a digression. If I had had a good wife to keep me in 
order, I never should have gone so far out of the road. Here is 
Sam in bed, sitting up, with his happy head upon his hands, trying 
to believe that this dream of love is going to be realised — trying 
to believe that it is really his wedding morn. 

It evidently is ; so he gets out of bed and says his prayers like 
an honest gentleman — he very often forgot to do this same, but he 
did it this morning carefully — much I am afraid as a kind of charm 
or incantation, till he came to the Lord’s Prayer itself, and then 
his whole happy soul wedded itself to the eternal words, and he 
arose calm and happy, and went down to bathe. 

Happy, I said. Was he really happy ? He ought to have 
been ; for every wish he had in this life was fulfilled. And yet, 
when Jim, and he, and Halbert, were walking, towel in hand, down 
the garden, they held this conversation 

“ Sam, my dear old brother, at last,” said Jim, “ are you 
happy ? ” 

“ I ought to be, Jim,” said Sam ; “ but I’m in the most con- 
founded fright, sir.” — They generally are in a fright, when they 
are going to be married, those Benedicts. What the deuce are 
they afraid of ? 

Our dear Jim was in anything but an enviable frame of mind. 
He had found out several things which did not at all conduce to 
his happiness ; he had found out that it was one thing to propose 
going to India, or No-man’ s-land, and cutting off every tie and 
association which he had in the world ; and that it was quite 
another thing to do that same. He had found out that it was one 
thing to leave his sister in the keeping of his friend Sam, and 
another to part from her probably for ever ; and, last of all, he 
had found out, ever since his father had put his arm round his 


444 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


neck and kissed him that night we know of, that he loved that 
father beyond all men in this world. It was a new discovery ; he 
had never known it till he found he had got to part with him. 
And now, when he woke in the night, our old merry-hearted Jim 
sat up in bed and wept ; aye, and no shame to him for it, when 
he thought of that handsome, calm, bronzed face, tearless and 
quiet there, over the fortifications and the mathematics, when he 
was far away. 

“ He will never say a word, Sam,” said Jim, as they were walk- 
ing down to bathe this very morning of the wedding; “ but he’ll 
think the more. Sam, I am afraid I have done a selfish thing in 
going ; but if I were to draw back now, I should never be the same 
to him again. He couldn’t stand that. But I am sorry I ever 
thought of it.” 

“ I don’t know, Jim,” said Halbert, pulling oft' histrowsers, “ I 
really don’t know of any act of parliament passed in favour of the 
Brentwood family, exempting them from the ordinary evils of 
humanity. Do you think now, that when John Nokes, aged nine- 
teen, goes into market at Cambridge, or elsewhere, and ’lists, and 
never goes home again ; do you think, I say, that that lad don’t 
feel a very strange emptiness about the epigastric region when he 
thinks of the grey-headed old man that is sitting waiting for him 
at the cottage-door ? And,” added Halbert, standing on the 
plunging- stage Adamically, without a rag upon him, pointing at 
Jim with his finger in an oratorical manner ; “do you think that 
the old man who sits there, year after year, waiting for him who 
never comes, and telling the neighbours that his lad who is gone 
for a sodger, was the finest lad in the village, do you think that old 
man feels nothing ? Give up fine feelings, Jim. You don’t know 
what trouble is yet.” 

And so he went souse into the water. 

And after the bathe all came up and dressed ; — white trowsers 
and brilliant ties being the order of the day. Then we all, from 
the bachelor side of the house, assembled in the verandah, for 
the ceremony was not to be performed till eight, and it was not 
more than half-past seven. There was the promise of a very 
awkward half hour, so I was glad of a diversion caused by my 
appearing in a blue coat with gilt buttons, and pockets in the tails, 
— a coat I had not brought out for twenty years, but as good as 
new, I give you my honour. Jim was very funny about that coat, 
and I encouraged him by defending it, and so we got through ten 
minutes, and kept Sam amused. Then one of the grooms, a lad 
I mentioned before as bringing a note to Baroona on one occasion, 
a long brown-faced lad, bom of London parents in the colony. 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


445 


made a diversion by coming round to look at us. He admired us 
very much, but my gilt buttons took his attention principally. He 
guessed they must have cost a matter of twenty pound, but on my 
telling him that the whole affair was bought for three pounds, he 
asked, I remember : — 

“ What are they made on, then ? ” 

Brass I supposed, and gilt. So he left me in disgust, and took 
up with Jim’s trowsers, wanting to know “ if they was canvas.” 

“ Satin velvet,” Jim said ; and then the Major came out and 
beckoned us into the drawing-room. 

And there she was, between Mrs. Buckley and Mary Hawker, 
dressed all in white, looking as beautiful as morning. Frank 
Maberly stood beside a little table, which the women had made 
into an altar, with the big Prayer-book in his hand. And we all 
stood around, and the servants thronged in, and Sam, taking 
Alice’s hand, went up and stood before FVank Maberly. 

Captain Brentwood, of the Artillery, would give this woman to 
be married to this man, with ten thousand blessings on her head ; 
and Samuel Buckley, of Baroona, would take this woman as his 
wedded wife, in sickness and health, for richer, for poorer, till 
death did them part. And, Yes, by George, he will,” says Jim 
to himself, — but I heard him, for we were reading out of the same 
Prayer-book. 

And so it was all over. And the Doctor, who had all the morn- 
ing been invisible, and had only slipt into the room just as the 
ceremony had begun, wearing on his coat a great star, a prodigy, 
which had drawn many eyes from their Prayer-books, the Doctor, 
I say, came up, star and all, and taking Alice’s hand, kissed her 
forehead, and then clasped a splendid necklace round her throat. 

Then followed all the usual kissings and congratulations, and 
then came the breakfast. I hope Alice and Sam were happy, as 
happy as young folks can be in such a state of flutter and excite- 
ment ; but all I know is, that the rest of the party were thoroughly 
and utterly miserable. The certainty that this was the break-up 
of our happy old society, that all that Avas young, and merry, and 
graceful, among us, was about to take wing and leave us old folks 
sitting there lonely and dull. The thought, that neither Baroona 
nor Garoopna could ever be again what they had once been, and 
that never again Ave should hear those merry voices, Avakening us 
in the morning, or ringing pleasant by the river on the soft sum- 
mer’s evening ; these thoughts, I say, made us but a dull party, 
although CovetoAvn and the Doctor made talking enough for the 
rest of us. 

There was something I could not understand about the Doctor. 


446 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


He talked loud and nervously all breakfast time, and afterwards, 
when Alice retired to change her dress, and we were all standing 
about talking, he came up to me in a quiet comer where I was, 
and took me by the hand. “ My dear old friend,” he said, you 
will never forget me, will you ? ” 

“ Forget you, Baron ! never,” I said. I would have asked him 
more, but there was Alice in the room, in her pretty blue riding- 
habit and hat, ready for a start, and Sam beside her, whip in hand ; 
so we all crowded out to say good-bye. 

That was the worst time of all. Mrs. Buckley had said farewell 
and departed. Jim was walking about tearless, but quite unable 
to answer me when I asked him a question. Those two grim old 
warriors, the Captain and the Major, were taking things very 
quietly, but did not seem inclined to talk much, while the Doctor 
was conducting himself like an amiable lunatic, getting in every- 
body’s way as he followed Sam about. 

“ Sam,” he said, after Alice had been lifted on her horse, “ my 
dear Sam, my good pupil, you will never forget your old tutor, will 
you?” 

‘‘Never, never!” said Sam; “not likely, if I lived to be a 
hundred. I shall see you to-morrow.” 

“Oh yes, surely,” said the Baron; “we shall meet to-morrow 
for certain. But good-bye, my boy ; good-bye.” 

And then the young couple rode away to Baroona, which was 
empty, swept, and garnished, ready for their reception. And the 
servants cheered them as they went away, and tall Eleanor sent 
one of her husband’s boots after them for luck, with such force 
and dexterity that it fell close to the heels of Widderin, setting 
him capering ; — then Sam turned round and waved his hat, and 
they were gone. 

And we turned round to look at one another, and lo ! another 
horse, the Doctor’s, was being led up and down by a groom, saddled ; 
and, while we wondered, out came the Doctor himself and began 
strapping his valise on to the saddle. 

“And where are you going to-day, Baron?” asked the Major. 

“I am going,” said he, “ to Sydney. I sail for Europe in a 
week.” 

Our astonishment was too great for ejaculations ; we kept an 
awful silence ; this was the first hint he had given us of his 
intention. 

“Yes,” said he, “ I sail from Sydney this day week. I could 
not embitter my boy’s wedding-day by letting him know that he 
was to lose me ; better that he should come back and find me 
gone. I must go, and I foresaw it when the letter came ; but I 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


447 


would not tell you, because I knew you would be so sorry to part. 
I have been inside and said farewell to Mrs. Buckley. And now, 
my friends, shorten this scene for me. Night and day, for a 
month, I have been dreading it, and now let us spare one another. 
Why should we tear our hearts asunder by a long leave-taking ? 
Oh, Buckley, Buckley ! after so many years — 

Only a hurried shaking of hands, and he was gone. Down by 
the paddock to the river, and when he reached the height beyond, 
he turned and waved his hand. Then he went on his way across 
the old plains, and we saw him lessening in the distance until he 
disaj)peared altogether, and we saw him no more. No more ! 

In two months from that time Jim and Halbert were gone to 
India, Sam and Alice were away to the Darling Downs, Desborough 
and the Doctor had sailed for Europe, and we old folks, taking up 
our residence at Baroona, had agreed to make common house of 
it. Of course we were very dull at first, when we missed half of 
the faces which had been used to smile upon us ; but this soon 
wnre ofi‘. During the succeeding winter I remember many plea- 
sant evenings, when the Captain, the Major, Mrs. Buckley, and 
myself played whist, shilling points and the rigour of the game, 
and w’hile Mary Hawker, in her widow’s weeds, sat sewing by the 
fireside, contentedly enough. 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

HOW MAKY HAWKER SAID “YES.” 

It was one evening during the next spring, and the game of whist 
was over for the night. The servant had just brought in tumblers 
with a view to whiskey and water before bed. I was preparing to 
pay fourteen shillings to Mrs. Buckley, and was rather nervous 
about meeting my partner, the Major’s eye, when he, tapping the 
table with his hand, spoke : — 

“ The most childish play, Hamlyn ; the most childish play.” 

“ I don’t defend the last game,” I said. “ I thought you w^ere 
short of diamonds — at least I calculated on the chance of your 
being so, having seven myself. But please to remember. Major, 
that you yourself lost two tricks in hearts, in the first game of the 
second rubber.” 

“ And why, sir ? ” said the Major. “ Tell me that, sir. Because 
you confused me by leading (jueen, when you had ace, king, queen. 


448 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


The most utterly schoolboy play. I wouldn’t have done such a 
thing at Eton.” 

“I had a flush of them,” I said eagerly. “ And I meant to 
lead ace, and then get trumps out. But I put down queen by 
mistake.” 

“ You can make what excuses you like, Hamlyn,” said the 
Major. “ But the fact remains the same. There is one great 
fault in your character, the greatest fault I know of, and which 
you ought to study to correct. I tell you of it boldly as an old 
friend. You are too confoundedly chary in leading out your trumps, 
and you can’t deny it.” 

“ Hallo ! ” said Captain Brentwood, “ who comes so late ? ” 

Mary Hawker rose from her chair, and looked eagerly towards 
the door. “I know who it is,” she said, blushing. “I heard 
him laugh.” 

In another moment the door was thrown open, and in stalked 
Tom Troubridge. 

“ By George ! ” he said. “ Don’t all speak to me at once. I 
feel the queerest wambling in my innards, as we used to say in 
Devon, at the sight of so many old faces. Somehow, a man can’t 
make a new home in a hurry. It’s the people make the home, 
not the house and furniture. My dear old cousin, and how are 
you?” 

I am very quiet, Tom. I am much happier than I thought to 
have been. And I am deeply thankful to see you again.” 

‘‘ How h my boy, Tom ? ” said the Major. 

“ And how is my girl, Tom ? ” said the Captain. 

“ Sam,” said Tom, “ is a sight worth a guinea, and Mrs. Samuel 
looks charming, but — In point of fact, you know, I believe she 
expects — ” 

“ No ! ” said the Captain. “ You don’t say so.” 

“ Fact, my dear sir.” 

“ Dear me,” said the Major, drumming on the table. “ I hope 
it will be a b — . By the bye, how go the sheep ? ” 

“ You never saw such a countiy, sir ! ” said Tom. “ We have 
got nearly five thousand on each run, and there is no one crowding 
up yet. If we can hold that ground with our produce, and such 
store-sheep as we can pick up, we shall do wonders.” 

By this time Tom was at supper, and between the business of 
satisfying a hunger of fifteen hours, began asking after old friends. 

“ How are the Mayfords ? ” he asked. 

“ Poor Mrs. Mayford is better,” said Mrs. Buckley. “ She and 
Ellen are just starting for Europe. They have sold their station, 
and we have bought it.” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


449 


“ What are they going to do in England ? ” asked Tom. 

“ Going to live with their relations in Hampshire.” 

“Ellen will be a fine match for some young English squire,” 
said Tom. “ She will have twenty thousand pounds some day, I 
suppose.” 

And then we went on talking about other matters. 

A little scene took place in the garden next morning, which may 
astonish some of my readers, hut which did not surprise me in the 
least. I knew it would happen, sooner or later, and when I saw 
Tom’s air, on his arrival the night before, I said to myself, “It is 
coming,” and so sure enough it did. And I got all the circum- 
stances out of Tom only a few days afterwards. 

Mary Hawker was now a very handsome woman, about one and 
forty. There may have been a grey hair here and there among 
her long black tresses, but they were few and far between. I used 
to watch her sometimes of an evening, and wonder to myself how 
she had come through such troubles, and lived ; and yet there she 
was on the night when Tom arrived, for instance, sitting quite 
calm and cheerful beside the fire in her half-mouming (she had 
soon dropped her weeds, perhaps, considering who her husband 
had been, a piece of good taste), with quite a placid, contented 
look on her fine black eyes. I think no one was capable of feeling 
deeper for a time, but her power of resilience was marvellous. I 
have noticed that before. It may, God forgive me, have given 
me some slight feeling of contempt for her, because, forsooth, she 
did not brood over and nurse an old grief as I did myself. I am 
not the man to judge her. When I look back on my own wasted 
life ; when I see how for one boyish fancy I cut myself off from 
all the ties of domestic life, to hold my selfish way alone, I some- 
times think that she has shown herself a better woman than I have 
a man. Ah ! weU, old sweetheart, not much to boast of either of 
us. Let us get on. 

She was walking in the garden next morning, and Tom came 
and walked beside her ; and after a little he said, — 

“ So you are pretty well contented, cousin ? ” 

“I am as well content,” she said, “ as a poor, desolate, old 
childless widow could hope to be. There is no happiness left for 
me in this life ! ” 

“ Who told you that ? ” said Tom. “ Who told you that the 
next twenty years of your life might not be happier than any that 
have gone before ? ” 

“ How could that be ? ” she asked. “ What is left for me now, 
but to go quietly to my grave ? ” 

“ Grave ! ” said Tom. “ Who talks of graves for twenty years 

30 


450 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


to come ! Mary, my darling, I have waited for you so long and 
faithfully, you will not disappoint me at last ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? What can you mean ? ” 

“ Mean ! ” said he ; “ why, I mean this, cousin : I mean you 
to be my wife — to come and live with me as my honoured wife, for 
the next thirty years, please God ! ” 

“ You are mad ! ” she said. “ Do you know what you say ? 
Do you know who you are speaking to ? ” 

“ To my old sweetheart, Polly Thornton ! ” he said, with a 
laugh — “ to no one else in the world.” 

“ You are wrong,” she said ; “ you may try to forget now, but 
you will remember afterwards. I am not Mary Thornton. I am 
an old broken woman, whose husband was transported for coining, 
and hung for murder, and worse ! ” 

“Peace be with him! ” said Tom. “ I am not asking who 
your husband was ; I have had twenty years to think about that, 
and at the end of twenty years, I say, my dear old sweetheart, you 
are free at last : will you marry me ? ” 

“ Impossible I ” said Mary. “ All the country-side knows who 
I am. Think of the eternal disgrace that clings to me. Oh, 
never, never ! ” 

“ Then you have no objection to me ? eh, cousin ? ” 

“ To you, my kind, noble old partner ? Ah, I love and honour 
you above all men ! ’ ’ 

“ Then,” said Tom, putting his arm round her waist, “to the 
devil with all the nonsense you have just been talking, about eternal 
disgraces and so forth ! I am an honest man and you’re an honest 
woman, and, therefore, what cause or impediment can there be ? 
Come, Mary, it’s no use resisting ; my mind is made up, and you 
must ! ’ 

“ Oh, think ! ” she said ; “ oh, think only once, before it is too 
late for ever ! ” 

“ I have thought,” said Tom, “ as I told you before, for twenty 
years ; and I ain’t likely to alter my opinion in ten minutes. 
Come, Mary. Say yes ! ” 

And so she said yes. 

“ Mrs. Buckley,” said Tom, as they came up arm in arm to the 
house, “ it will be a good thing if somebody was to go up to our 
place, and nurse Mrs. Sam in her confinement.” 

“ I shall go up myself,” said Mrs. Buckley, “ though how I am 
to get there I hardly know. It must be nearly eight hundred 
miles, I am afraid.” 

“ I don’t think you need, my dear madam,” said he. “ My 
wife will make an excellent nurse ! ” 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


451 


“ Your wife ! ” 

Tom looked at Mary, who blushed, and Mrs. Buckley came up 
and kissed her. 

“ I am so glad, so very glad, my love ! ” she said. “ The very 
happiest and wisest thing that could be ! I have been hoping for 
it, my love, and I felt sure it would be so, sooner or later. How 
glad your dear aunt would be if she were alive ! ” 

And, in short, he took her off with him, and they were married, 
and went up to join Sam and his wife in New England — reducing 
our party to four. Not very long after they were gone, we heard 
that there was a new Sam Buckley born, who promised, said the 
wise woman, to be as big a man as his father. Then, at an 
interval of very little more than two years, Mrs. Buckley got a 
long letter from Alice, announcing the birth of a little girl to the 
Troubridges. This letter is stiU extant, and in my possession, 
having been lent me, among other family papers, by Agnes 
Buckley, as soon as she heard that I was bent upon correcting 
these memoirs to fit them for the press. I will give you some 
extracts from it : — 

. . . “ Dear Mary Troubridge has got a little girl, a sweet, 
quiet, bright-eyed little thing, taking, I imagine, after old Miss 
Thornton. They are going to call it Agnes Alice, after you and 
I, my dearest mother. 

“ You cannot imagine how different Mary is grown from what 
she used to be ! Stout, merry, and matronly, quite ! She keeps 
the house alive, and I think I never saw a couple more sincerely 
attached than are she and her husband. He is a most excellent 
companion for my Sam. Not to make matters too long, we are 
just about as happy as four people can be. Some day we may all 
come to live together again, and then our delight will be perfect. 

“ I got Jim’s letter which you sent me. . . . Sam and his 
partner are embarking every sixpence they can spare in buying 
town and suburban lots at Melbourne. I know every street and 
alley in that wonderful city (containing near a hundred houses) on 
the map, but I am not very likely to go there ever. Let us hope 
that Sam’s speculations will turn out profitable. 

“Best love to Mr. Hamlyn.” . . . 

I must make a note to this letter. Alice refers to a letter 
received from Jim, which, as near as I can make the dates agree, 
must be the one I hold in my hand at this moment. I am not 
sure, but I think so. This one runs — 

Dear Dad, ... I have been down among the dead men, and 


452 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


since then up into the seventh heaven, in consequence of being 
not only gazetted, but promoted. The beggars very nearly did 
for us. All our fortifications, the prettiest things ever done under 
the circumstances, executed under Bobby’s owm eye, were thrown 
down by — what do you think ? — an earthquake ! Perhaps we 
didn’t swear — Lord forgive us ! Akhar had a shy at us immedi- 
ately, but got a most immortal licking ! 

“ Is not this a most wonderful thing about Halbert ? The girl 
that he was to be married to was supposed to be lost, coming out 
in the Assam. And now it appears that she wasn’t lost at all (the 
girl I mean, not the ship), but that she was wrecked on the east 
coast of Madagascar, and saved, with five-and-twenty more. She 
came on to Calcutta, and they were married the week after he got 
his troop. She is uncommonly handsome and ladylike, but looks 
rather bro^vn and lean from living on birds’ nests and sea- weed for 
above six months of her life.” 

[Allow. me to remark that this must be romance on Jim’s part ; 
birds’ nests and trepang are not found in Madagascar.] 

“ My wound is nearly aU right again. It was only a prick with 
a spear in my thigh — ” 

It is the very deuce editing these old letters without anything to 
guide me. As far as I can make out by myself (Jim being now 
down at Melton, hunting, and not having answered my letter of 
inquiries), this letter must have come accompanied by an Indian 
newspaper containing the account of some battle or campaign in 
which he was engaged. Putting this and that together, I am in- 
clined to believe that it refers to the defence of Jellalabad by Sir 
Kobert Sale, in which I know he was engaged. I form this opinion 
from the fact of his mentioning that the fortifications were destroyed 
by an earthquake. And I very much fear that the individual so 
disrespectfully mentioned above as “ Bobby,” was no other than 
the great Hero himself. In my second (or if that goos off too 
quick, in my third) edition, I will endeavour to clear this point up 
in a satisfactory manner. 

After this time there was a long dull time with no news from 
him or from any one. Then Sam came down from New England, 
and paid us a visit, which freshened us up a little. But in spite 
of this and other episodes, there was little change or excitement 
for us four. We made common house of it, and never parted from 
one another more than a day. Always of an evening came the old 
friendly rubber, I playing with the Major, and Captain Brentwood 
with Mrs. Buckley. The most remarkable event I have to 
chronicle during the long period which followed, is, that one day 
a bushfire came right up to the garden rails, and was beaten out 


GEOFFEY HAMLYN. 


453 


with difficulty ; and that same evening I held nine trumps, Ace, 
Queen, Knave, Nine of hearts, and the rest small. I cannot for 
the life of me remember what year it was in, somewhere between 
forty-two and forty-five, I believe, because within a year or two of 
that time we heard that a large comet had appeared in England, 
and that Sir Robert Peel was distrusted on the subject of Protec- 
tion. After all, it is no great consequence, though it is rather 
provoking, because I never before or since held more than eight 
trumps. Burnside, the cattle-dealer, claims to have had eleven, 
but I may state, once for all, that I doubt that man’s statements 
on this and every other subject on which he speaks. — He knows 
where I am to be found. 

My man Dick, too, somehow or another constituted himself my 
groom and valet. And the Major was well contented with the 
arrangement. So we four. Major and Mrs. Buckley, Captain 
Brentwood and I, sat there in the old station night after night, 
playing our whist, till even my head, the youngest of the four, 
began to be streaked with grey, and sixteen years were past. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE. 

It is March, 1856. The short autumn day is rapidly giving place 
to night ; and darkness, and the horror of a great tempest, is 
settling down upon the desolate grey sea, which heaves and seethes 
for ever around Cape Horn. 

A great clipper ship, the noblest and swiftest of her class, is 
hurling along her vast length before the temble west wind. Hour 
by hour through the short and gloomy day, sail after sail has gone 
fluttering in ; till now, at night-fall, she reels and rolls before the 
storm under a single, close reefed, maintopsail. 

There is a humming, and a roaring, and a rushing of great 
waters, so that they who are clinging to the bulwarks, and 
watching, awe-struck, this great work of the Lord’s, cannot 
hear one another though they shout. Now there is a grey 
mountain which chases the ship, overtakes her, pours cataracts 
of water over her rounded stern, and goes hissing and booming 
past her. And now a roll more frantic than usual, nigh dips 
her mainyard, and sends the water spouting wildly over her 
bulwarks. 


454 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OF 


(“ Oh, you very miserable ass,” said Captain Brentwood ; ‘Ho 
sit down and try to describe the indescribable. Do you think 
that because you can see all the scene before you now, because 
your flesh creeps, and your blood moves, as you call it to mind, 
do you think, I say, that you can describe it ? Do you think 
that you can give a man, in black and white, with ink, and on 
paper, any real notion of that most tremendous spectacle, a 
sharp bowed ship running before a gale of wind through the 
ice in the great South Sea, where every wave rolls round the 
world ? Go to — read Tom Cringle, who has given up his whole 
soul to descriptions, and see how many pictures dwell in your 
mind’s eye, after reading his books. Two, or at most three, and 
they, probably, quite different from what he intended you to see, 
lovely as they are ; — leave describing things, man, and give us 
some more facts.” 

Said Major Buckley, “ Go on, Hamlyn, and do the best you can. 
Don’t mind him.” And so I go on accordingly.) 

61° 30" South. The Horn, storm-beaten, desolate, four 
hundred miles to the North, and barely forty miles to the South, 
that cruel, gleaming, ice harrier, which we saw to-day when the 
weather lifted at noon, and which we know is there yet, though we 
dare not think about it. There comes to us, though, in spite of 
ourselves, a vision of what may happen at any hour. A wild cry 
from the foretop. A mass, grey, indistinct, horrible, rising from 
the wild waters, scarce a hundred yards from her bowsprit. A 
mad huriying to and fro. A crash. A great ruin of masts and 
spars, and then utter, hopeless destruction. That is the way the 
poor old Madagascar must have gone. The Lord send us safe 
through the ice. 

Stunned, drenched to the skin, half- frightened, hut wildly excited 
and determined to see out, what a landsman has hut seldom a 
chance of seeing, a great gale of wind at sea, I clung tight to the 
starboard bulwarks of Mr. Richard Green’s new clipper, Sultan, 
Captain Sneezer, about an hour after dark, as she was rounding 
the Horn, watching much such a scene as I have attempted to give 
you a notion of above. And as I held on there, wishing that the 
directors of my insurance oflice could see me at that moment, the 
first mate, coming from forward, warping himself from one belay- 
ingpin to another, roared in my ear, “ that he thought it was 
going to blow.” 

“ Man ! man ! ” I said, “ do you mean to tell me it is not 
blowing now ? ” 

“ A hit of a breeze,” he roared ; but his roar came to me like a 
whisper. However, I pretty soon found out that this was some- 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


455 


thing quite out of the common ; for, crawling up, along the gang- 
way which runs between the poophouse and the bulwarks, I came 
with great difficulty to the stem ; and there I saw the two best 
men in the larboard watch (let us immortalise them, they were 
Deaf Bob, and Harry the digger), lashed to the wheel, and the 
Skipper himself, steadfast and anxious, alongside of them, lashed 
to a cleat on the afterpart of the deck-house. So thinks I, if 
these men are made fast, this is no place for me to be loose in, 
and crawled down to my old place in the waist, at the after end 
of the spare topsail-yard, which was made fast to the starboard 
bulwarks, and which extended a little abaft of the main shrouds. 

If any gentleman can detect a nautical error in that last sentence, 
I shall feel obliged by his mentioning it. 

Somebody who came forth from the confusion, and was gone 
again, informed me that “ He was going to lay her to, and that 
I’d better hold on.” I comforted myself with the reflection that I 
was doing exactly the right thing, holding on like grim death. 

Then something happened, and I am sorry to say I don’t exactly 
know what. I find in my notes, taken shortly afterwards, from the 
dictation of an intelligent midshipman, “ that the fore-royal yard 
got jammed with the spanker-boom, and carried away the larboard 
quarterboat.” Nautical friends have since pointed out to me that 
this involves an impossibility. I daresay it does. I know it in- 
volved an impossibility of turning in without subjecting yourself to 
a hydropathic remedy of violent nature, by going to bed in wet 
blankets, and of getting anything for breakfast besides wet biscuit 
and cold tea. Let it go ; something went wrong, and the con- 
sequences were these. 

A wall of water, looming high above her mainyard, came rushing 
and booming along, dark, tenable, opaque. For a moment I saw 
it curling overhead, and would have cried out, I believe, had there 
been time ; but a midshipman, a mere child, slipped up before me, 
and caught hold of my legs, while I tried to catch his collar. 
Then I heard the skipper roar out, in that hoarse throaty voice 
that seamen use when excited, “Hold on, the sea’s aboard,” and 
then a stunning, blinding rush of water buried us altogether. The 
Sultan was on her beam-ends, and what was more, seemed inclined 
to stay there, so that I, holding on by the bulwarks, saw the sea 
seething and boiling almost beneath my feet, which were swinging 
clear off* the deck. 

But the midshipman sung out that she was righting again, which 
she did rather quicker than was desirable, bringing every loose 
article on deck down to our side again with a rush. A useless, 
* “He,” on board ship, always means “ the skipper.” 


456 


THE RECOLLECTIONS OE 


thundering, four-pounder gun, of which terrible implements of war 
we carried six, came plunging across from the other side of the 
deck, and went crashing through the bulwarks, out into the sea, 
within two feet of my legs. 

“I think,” I said, trying to persuade myself that I was not 
frightened, “ I think I shall go into the cuddy.” 

That was not very easy to do. I reached the door, and got hold 
of the handle, and, watching my opportunity slipped dexterously in, 
and making a plunge, came against the surgeon, who, seated on a 
camp-stool, was playing piquette, and overthrew him into a corner. 

“Repique, by jingo,” shouted Sam Buckley, who was the sur- 
geon’s opponenL “ See what a capital thing it is to have an old 
friend like Hamlyn, to come in and knock your opponent down just 
at the right moment.” 

“ And papa was losing, too. Uncle Jeff,” added a handsome lad, 
about fifteen, who was leaning over Sam’s shoulder. 

“ What are they doing to you. Doctor ? ” said Alice Buckley, nee 
Brentwood, coining out of a cabin, and supporting herself to a seat 
by her husband and son. 

“ Why,” replied the surgeon, “ Hamlyn knocked me down just 
in a moment of victory, but his nefarious project has failed, for I 
have kept possession of my cards. Play, Bucldey.” 

Let us give a glance at the group which is assembled beneath 
the swing lamp in the reeling cabin. The wife and son are both 
leaning over the father’s shoulder, and the three faces are together. 
Sam is about forty. There is not a wTinkle in that honest fore- 
head, and the eyes beam upon you as kindly and pleasantly as 
ever they did ; and when, after playing to the surgeon, he looks 
up and laughs, one sees that he is just the same old Sam that 
used to lie, as a lad, dreaming in the verandah at Garoopna. No 
trouble has left its shadow there. Alice, whose face is pressed 
against his, is now a calm young matron of three or four-and- 
thirty, if it were possible, more beautiful than ever, only she has 
grown from a Hebe into a Juno. The boy, the son and heir, is 
much such a stripling as I can remember his father at the same 
age, but handsomer. And while we look, another face comes 
peering over his shoulder ; the laughing face of a lovely girl, with 
bright sunny hair, and soft blue eyes ; the face of Maud Buckley, 
Sam’s daughter. 

They are going home to England. Sam — what between his 
New England runs, where there are now, under Tom Troubridge’s 
care, 118,000 sheep, and his land speculations at Melbourne, 
which have turned him out somewhere about 1,000 per cent, since 
the gold discovery — Sam, I say, is one of the richest of her 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


457 


Majesty’s subjects in the Southern hemisphere. I would give 
200,000/. for Sam, and make a large fortune in the surplus. 
“ And so,” I suppose you say, “ he is going home to buy Clere.” 
Not at all, my dear sir. Clere is bought, and Sam is going home 
to take possession. “ Marry, how ? ” Thus, — 

Does any one of my readers remember that our dear old friend 
Agnes Buckley’s maiden name was Talbot, and that her father 
owned the property adjoining Clere? “We do not remember,” 
you say ; “or at least, if we do, we are not bound to ; you have 
not mentioned the circumstance since the very beginning of this 
excessively wearisome book, forty years ago.” Allow me to say, 
that I have purposely avoided mentioning them all along, in order 
that, at this very point, I might come down on you like a thunder- 
bolt with this piece of information ; namely : — That Talbot of 
Beaulieu Castle, the towers of which were visible from Clere 
Terrace, had died without male issue. That Marian and Gertrude 
Talbot, the two pretty girls, Agnes Buckley’s eldest sisters, who 
used to come in and see old Marmaduke when James was cam- 
paigning, had never married. That Marian was dead. That 
Gertrude, a broken old maid, was sole owner of Beaulieu Castle, 
with eight thousand a-year ; and that Agnes Buckley, her sister, 
and consequently, Sam as next in succession, was her heir.* 

All the negotiations for the purchase of Clere had been carried 
on through Miss Gertrude and her steward. The brewer died, the 
property was sold, and Sam, by his agents, bought old Clere back, 
eight months before this, for 48,000/. 

“ Then, why on earth,” says Mrs. Councillor Wattlegum (our 
colonial Mrs. Grundy), “ didn’t they go home overland ? How 
could people with such wealth as you describe, demean themselves 
by going home round the Horn, like a parcel of diggers ? ” 

“ Because, my dear Madam, the young folks were very anxious 
to see an iceberg. Come, let us get on.” 

The gale has lasted three days, and in that time we have run 
before it on our course 970 miles. The fourth morning breaks 
gloriously bright, with the shadows of a few fleecy clouds flying 
across the bright blue heaving sea. The ship, with all canvas 
crowded on her, alow and aloft, is racing on, fifteen knots an hour, 
with a brisk cold wind full on her quarter, heeling over till the 
water comes rushing and spouting through her leeward ports, and 
* If you will examine the most successful of our modern novels, you 
will find that the great object of the author is to keep the reader in a 
continual state of astonishment. Following this rule, I give myself great 
credit for this coup de theatre. I am certain that the most experienced 
novel reader could not have foreseen it. I may safely say that none of 
my readers will be half so much astonished as I was myself. 


458 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


no man can stand without holding on, hut all are merry and happy 
to see the water fly past like blue champagne, and to watch the 
seething wake that the good ship leaves behind her. All ! what 
is this, that all are crowding down to leeward to look at ? Is 
this the Crystal Palace, of which we have read, come out to sea to 
meet us ? No ! the young folks are going to be gratified. It is 
a great iceberg, and we shall pass about a mile to windward. 

Certainly worth seeing. Much more tremendous than I had 
expected, though my imagination had rather run riot in expec- 
tation. Just a great floating cluster of shining splintered crystals, 
about a mile long and 300 feet high, with the cold hungry sea 
leaping and gnawing at its base, — that is all. Send up those 
German musicians here, and let us hear the echo of one of 
Strauss’ Waltzes come ringing back from the chill green caverns. 
Then away ; her head is northward again now, we may sight the 
Falklands the day after to-morrow. 

Hardly worth telling you much more about that happy voyage, 
I think, and really I remember but few things more of note. A 
great American ship in 45°, steaming in the teeth of the wind, 
heaving her long gleaming sides through the roll of the South 
Atlantic. The Royal Charter'*' passing us like a phantom ship 
through the hot haze, when we were becalmed on the line, waking 
the silence of the heaving glassy sea with her throbbing propeller. 
A valiant vain-glorious little gun-boat going out aU the way to 
China by herself, giving herself the airs of a seventy-four, re- 
quiring boats to be sent on board her, as if we couldn’t have 
stowed her, guns and all, on our poop, and never crowded our- 
selves ! A noble transport, with 53 painted on her bows, swarm- 
ing with soldiers for India, to whom we gave three times three. 
All these things have faded from my recollection in favour of a 
bright spring morning in April. 

A morning which, beyond all others in my life, stands out clear 
and distinct, as the most memorable. Jim Buckley shoved aside 
my cabin door when I was dressing, and says he, — “ Uncle Jeff, 
my Dad wants you immediately ; he is standing by the davits of 
the larboard quarterboat.” 

And so I ran up to Sam, and he took my arm and pointed 
northward. Over the gleaming morning sea rose a purple moun- 
tain, shadowed here and there by travelling clouds ; and a little 
red -sailed boat was diving and plunging towards us, with a red 
flag fluttering on her mast. 

* Alas ! alas ! how little did I think that in my second edition, I should 
have to remind my readers that this, the most beautiful of ships, had 
perished on the coast of Anglesey, with her 500 souls ! 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


459 


“ Wliat ! ” I said, — but I could say no more. 

“ The Lizard ! ” 

But I could not see it now for a blinding haze, and I bent down 
my head upon the bulwarks — Bah ! I am but a fool after all. 
What could there have been to cry at in a Cornish moor, and a 
Falmouth pilot boat ? I am not quite so young as I was, and my 
nerves are probably failing. That miist have been it. “ When I 
saw the steeple,” says M. Tapley, “ I thought it would have choked 
me.” Let me say the same of Eddystone Lighthouse, which we 
saw that afternoon ; and have done with sentiment for good. If 
my memory serves me rightly, we have had a good deal of that 
sort of thing in the preceding pages. 

I left the ship at Plymouth, and Sam went on in her to London. 
I satisfied my soul with amazement at the men of war, and the 
breakwater ; and, having bought a horse, I struck boldly across 
the moor for Drumston, revisiting on my way many a well-known 
snipe-ground, and old trout-haunt ; and so, on the third morning, 
I reached Drumston once more, and stabled my horse at a little 
public -house near the church. 

It was about eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning ; nevertheless, 
the church-bell was going, and the door was open as if for prayer. 
I was a little surprised at this, but having visited the grave where 
my father and mother lay, and then passed on to the simple head- 
stone which marked the resting place of John Thornton and his 
wife, I brushed through the docks and nettles, towards the lych- 
gate, in the shadow of which stood the clergyman, a gentlemanly 
looking young man, talking to a very aged woman in a red cloak. 

He saluted me courteously, and passed on, talking earnestly and 
kindly to his aged companion, and so the remarkable couple went 
into the church, and the bell stopped. 

I looked around. Close to me, leaning against the gate, was a 
coarse looking woman about fifty, who had just set down a red 
earthen pitcher to rest herself, and seemed not disinclined for a 
gossip. And at the same moment I saw a fat man, about my own 
age, with breeches unbuttoned at the knee, grey worsted stockings 
and slippers, and looking altogether as if he was just out of bed, 
having had too much to drink the night before ; such a man, I say, 
I saw coming across the road, towards us, with his hands in his 
pockets. 

“ Good morning,” I said to the woman. “ Pray what is the 
clergyman’s name ? ” 

“ Mr. Montague,” she answered, "with a curtsey. 

“ Does he have prayers every morning ? ” 

“ Every marnin’ of his life,” she said. “ He’s a Papister.” 


460 


THE liECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ You’m a fool, Cis Jewel,” said the man, who had by this 
tinm arrived. “ You’m leading the gentleman wong, he’s a 
Pussyite.” 

“And there bain’t much difference, I’m thinking, James Gos- 
ford,” said Cis Jewell. 

I started. Jam*es Gosford had been one of my favourite old 
comrades in times gone by, and here he was. Could it be he ? 
Could this fat red-faced man of sixty-one, be the handsome hard- 
riding young dandy of forty years ago ? It was he, doubtless, 
and in another moment I should have declared myself, but a new 
interruption occurred. 

The bell began again, and service was over. The old woman 
came out of the porch and slowly down the path towards us. 

“ Is that all his congregation ? ” I asked. 

“ That’s all, sir,” said Gosford. “ Sometimes- some of they 
young villains of boys gets in, and our old clerk, Jerry, hunts 
’em round and round all prayer time ; but there’s none goes 
regular except the old ’ooman.” 

“And she had need to pray a little more than other folks,” 
said Cis Jewell, folding her arms, and balancing herself in a 
conversational attitude. “ My poor old grandfather ” 

Further conversation was stopped by the near approach of the 
old woman herself, and I looked up at her with some little curiosity. 
A very old woman she was surely ; and while I seemed struggling 
with some sort of recollection, she fixed her eyes upon me, and we 
knew one another. 

“ Geoffry Hamlyn,” she said, without a sign of sui’prise. “ You 
are welcome back to your native village. When your old comrade 
did not know you, I, whose eyes are dim with the sorrow of eighty 
years, recognised you at once. They may well call me the wise 
woman.” 

“ Good God ! ” was all I could say. “ Can this be Madge ? ” 

“ This is Madge,” she said, “ who has lived long enough to see 
and to bless the man who saw and comforted her poor lost boy in 
prison, when all beside fell off from him. The Lord reward you 
for it.” 

“ How did you know that, Madge ? ” 

“ Ask a witch where she gets her information ! ” laughed she. 
“ God forgive me. I’ll tell you how it was. One of the turnkeys 
in that very prison was a Cooper, a Hampshire gipsy, and he, 
knowing my boy to be half-blooded, passed all the facts on through 
the tribes to me, who am a mother among them ! Did you see him 
die ? ” she added, eagerly putting her great bony hand upon my 
arm, and looking up in my face. 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


401 


No ! no ! mother,” I answered : “ I hadn’t courage for that.” 

“ I heard he died game,” she continued, half to herself. “ He 
should a done. There was a deal of wild blood in him from both 
sides. Are you going up to the woodlands, to see the old place ? 
’Tis all in ruins now ; and the choughs and stares are building and 
brooding in the chimney nook where I nursed him. I shall not 
have much longer to wait ; I only stayed for this. Good-bye.” 

And she was gone ; and Gosford, relieved by her departure, was 
affectionately lugging me off to his house. Oh, the mixture of 
wealth and discomfort that house exhibited ! Oh, the warm-hearted 
jollity of every one there ! Oh, to see those three pretty, well- 
educated girls taking their father off by force, and making him 
clean himself in honour of my arrival ! Oh, the merry evening we 
had ! What, though the cyder disagreed with me ? What, though 
I knew it would disagree with me at the time I drank it ? That 
noisy, jolly night in the old Devonshire grange was one of the 
pleasantest of my life. 

And, to my great surprise, the Vicar came in in the middle of 
it, and made himself very agreeable to me. He told me that old 
Madge, as far as he could see, was a thoroughly converted and 
orderly person, having thrown aside all pretence of witchcraft. 
That she lived on some trifle of hoarded money of her own, and a 
small parish allowance that she had ; and that she had only come 
back to the parish some six years since, after wandering about as 
a gipsy in almost every part of England. He was so good as to 
undertake the delivery of a small sum to her weekly from me, 
quite sufficient to enable her to refuse the parish allowance, and 
live comfortably (he wrote to me a few months afterwards, and 
told me that it was required no longer, for that Madge was gone 
to rest at last) ; and a good deal more news he gave me, very little 
of which is interesting here. 

He ^ told me that Lord C , John Thornton’s friend, was 

dead ; that he never thoroughly got over the great Reform debate, 
in which he over- exerted himself ; and that, after the passing of 
that Bill, he had walked joyfully home and had a fit, wliich 
prevented his ever taking any part in politics afterwards, though 
he lived above ten years. That his son was not so popular as his 
father, in consequence of his politics, which were too conservative 
for the new class of tenants his father had brought in ; and his 
religious opinions, which, said the clergyman, were those of a 
sound Churchman ; by which he meant, I rather suspect, that he 
was a pretty smart Tractarian. I was getting won with this young 
gentleman, in spite of religious difference, when he chose to say 
that the parish had never been right since Maberly had it, and 


462 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


that the Dissenters always raved about him to this day ; whereby, 
he concluded, that Frank Maherly was far from orthodox. I took 
occasion to say that Frank was the man of all others in this world 
whom I admired most, and that, considering he had sealed his 
faith with his life, I thought that he ought to be very reverently 
spoken of. After this there arose a little coolness, and he went 
home. 

I went up to town by the Great Western, and, for the first time, 
knew what was meant by railway JbraveUing. True, I had seen and 
travelled on that monument of human industry, the Hobson’s Bay 
Railroad, but that stupendous work hardly prepared me for the 
Great Western. And on this journey I began to understand, for 
the first time in my life, what a marvellous country this England 
of ours was. I wondered at the wealth and traffic I saw, even in 
comparatively unimportant towns. I wondered at the beauty and 
solidity of the railway works ; at the vast crowds of people which 
I saw at every station ; at the manly, independent bearing of the 
men of the working classes, which combined so well with their 
civility and intelligence ; and I thought, with a laugh, of the fate 
of any eighty thousand men who might shove their noses into this 
bee-hive, while there was such material to draw upon. Such were 
the thoughts of an Englishman landing in England, from whom the 
evils produced by dense population were as yet hidden. 

But when I got into the whirl of London, I was completely over- 
whelmed and stupefied. I did not enjoy anything. The eternal 
roar was so different to what I had been used to ; and I had stayed 
there a couple of months before I had got a distinct impression of 
anything, save and except the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. 

It was during this visit to London that I heard of the fall of 
Von Landstein’s (Dr. Mulhaus’) Ministry, which had happened a 
year or two before. And now, also, I read the speech he made on 
his resignation, which, for biting sarcasm and bitter truth rudely 
told, is unequalled by any speech I ever read. A more witty, 
more insolent, more audacious tirade, was never hurled at a 

successful opposition by a fallen minister. The K party sat 

furious, as one by one were seized on by our ruthless friend, held 
up to ridicule, and thrown aside. They, however, meditated 
vengeance. 

Our friend, in the heat of debate, used the word, “ Drummer- 
kopf,” which answers, I believe, to our “ wooden head.” He 
applied it to no one in particular ; but a certain young nobleman 
(Bow-wow Von Azelsberg was his name) found the epithet so 
applicable to his own case, that he took umbrage at it ; and, being 
egged on by his comrades, challenged Von Landstein to mortal 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


463 


combat. Von Landstein received his fire without suffering, adjusted 
his spectacles, and shot the young gentleman in the knee, stopping 
his waltzing for ever and a day. He then departed for his castle, 
where he is at this present speaking (having just gone there after 
a visit to Clere) busy at his great book, “ The History of Fanatics 
and Fanaticism, from Mahomet to Joe Smith.” Beloved by all 
who come in contact with him ; happy, honoured, and prosperous, 
as he so well deserves to be. 

But I used to go and see everything that was to be seen, 
though, having no companion (for Sam was down at Clere, putting 
his house in order), it was very wretched work. I did, in fact, 
all the public amusements in London, and, as a matter of course, 
found myself one night, about eleven o’clock, at Evans’s in 
Covent Garden. 

The place was crowded to suffocation, but I got a place at a 
table about half-way up, opposite an old gentleman who had been 
drinking a good deal of brandy and water, and was wanting some 
more. Next me was an honest-looking young fellow enough, and 
opposite him his friend. These two looked like shop-lads, out for 
a “ spree.” 

A tall old gentleman made me buy some cigars, with such an 
air of condescending goodwill, that I was encouraged to stop a 
waiter and humbly ask for a glass of whiskey and water. He 
was kind enough to bring it for me ; so I felt more at ease, and 
prepared to enjoy myself. 

A very gentlemanly-looking man sang us a song, so unutterably 
funny that we were dissolved in inextinguishable laughter ; and 
then, from behind a curtain, began to come boys in black, one 
after another, as the imps in a pantomime come from a place 
I dare not mention, to chase the clown to his destruction. I 
counted twelve of them and grew dizzy. They ranged themselves 
in a row, with their hands behind them, and began screeching 
Tennyson’s “ Miller’s Daughter ” with such a maximum of shrill- 
ness, and such a minimum of expression, that I began to think 
that tailing wild cattle on the mountains, at midnight, in a 
thunderstorm, with my boots full of water, was a far preferable 
situation to my present one. 

They finished. Thank goodness. Ah ! delusive hope. The 
drunken old miscreant opposite me got up an encore with the 
bottom of his tumbler, and we had it all over again. Who can 
tell my delight when he broke his glass applauding, and the waiter 
came down on him sharp, and made him pay for it. I gave that 
waiter sixpence on the spot. 

Then came some capital singing, which I really enjoyed ; and 


464 


THE EECOLLECTIONS OF 


then came a remarkable adventure ; “an adventure ! ” you say ; 
“ and at Evans’s ! ” My dear sir, do you suppose that, at a 
moment like this, when I am pressed for space, and just coming 
to the end of my story ; do you suppose that, at a moment like 
this, I would waste your time at a singing-house for nothing ? 

A tall, upright looking man passed up the lane between the 
tables, and almost touched me as he passed. I did not catch his 
face, but there was something so distingue about him that I 
watched him. He had his hat off, and was smoothing down his 
close-cropped hair, and appeared to he looking for a seat. As he 
was just opposite to us, one of the young clerks leant over to the 
other, and said, — 

“ That is .” I did not catch what he said. 

“ By George,” said the other lad. “Is it now ? ” 

“ That’s him, sir,” said the first one, with a slight disregard 
of grammar. 

The new comer was walking slowly up the room, and there 
began to arise a little breeze of applause, and then some one called 
out, “ Three cheers for the Inkerman pet,” and then there was a 
stamping of feet, and a little laughter and cheering in various 
parts of the room ; but the new comer made one bow and walked 
on. 

“ Pray, sir,” said I, bending over to one of those who had 
spoken before, “ who is that gentleman ? ” 

He had no need to tell me. The man we spoke of reached the 
orchestra and turned round. It was Jim Brentwood ! 

There was a great white seam down his face, and he wore a 
pair of light curling moustachios, but I knew him in a moment ; 
and, when he faced round to the company, I noticed that his 
person seemed known to the public, for there was not a little 
applause with the bottoms of tumblers, not unlike what one remem- 
bers at certain banquets I have been at, with certain brethren. 
Sons of Apollo. 

In one moment we were standing face to face, shaking one 
another by both hands ; in another, we were arm in arm, walking 
through the quiet streets towards Jim’s lodgings. He had been in 
Ireland with his regiment, as I knew, which accoimted for my not 
having seen him. And that night. Major Brentwood recounted to 
me all his part in the last great campaign, from the first fierce 
rush up the hill at the Alma, down to the time when our Lady 
pinned a certain bit of gun metal on to his coat in St. James’s 
Park. 

A few days after this, Jim and I were standing together on the 
platform of the Wildmoor Station, on the South-Western Rail- 


GEOFFRY HAMLYN. 


465 


way, and a couple of porters were carrying our portmanteaus 
towards a pair-horse phaeton, in which stood Sam Buckley, shout- 
ing to us to come on, for the horses wouldn’t stand. So, in a 
moment, I was alongside of Sam in the front seat, with Jim 
standing up behind, between the grooms, and leaning over be- 
tween us, to see after Sam’s driving ; and away we went along a 
splendid road, across a heath, at what seemed to me a rather 
dangerous pace. 

“Let them go, my child,” said Jim to Sam, “you’ve got a 
fair mile before you. You sit at your work in capital style. Give 
me time and I’ll teach you to drive, Sam. How do you like this. 
Uncle Jeff?” 

I said, “ That’s more than I can tell you. Master Jim. I know 
so little of your wheeled vehicles that I am rather alarmed.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Jim, “ you should have been in Calcutta when the 
O’Rourke and little Charley Badminton tried to drive a pair of 
fresh imported Australians tandem through the town. Red Mac- 
lean and I looked out of the bilUard-room, and we saw the two 
horses go by with a hit of a shaft banging about the wheeler’s 
hocks. So we ran and found Charley, with his head broke, 
standing in the middle of the street, mopping the blood off his 
forehead. ‘ Charley,’ says I, ‘ how the deuce did this happen ? ’ 

‘ We met an elephant,’ says he, in a faint voice.” 

“ Have you heard anything of the Mayfords lately ? ” said Jim. 

“ You know Ellen is married ? ” said Sam. 

“ No. Is she ? ” I said. “ And pray to whom ? ” 

“ The Squire of Monkspool,” he answered. “ A very fine 
young fellow, and clever withal.” 

“Did old Mrs. Mayford,” asked Jim, “ever recover her reason 
before she died ? ” 

“ Never, poor soul,” said Sam. “ To the last she refused to 
see my mother, believing that the rivalry between Cecil and my- 
self in some way led to his death. She was never sane after that 
dreadful morning.” 

And so with much pleasant talk we beguiled the way, till I saw, 
across a deep valley on our right, a line of noble heights, well 
timbered, hut broken into open grassy glades, and smooth sheets 
of bright ^een lawn. Between us and these hills flowed a 
gleaming river, from which a broad avenue led up to the eye of 
the picture, a noble grey stone mansion, a mass of turrets, gables, 
and chimneys, which the afternoon sun was lighting up right 
pleasantly 

“ That is the finest seat I have seen yet, Sam,” I said. 
“ Whose is that ? ” 


31 


466 


THE KECOLLECTIONS OF 


“ That,” said Sam, “ is Clere. My house and your home, old 
friend.” 

Swiftly up under the shadow of the elm avenue, past the 
herds of dappled deer, up to the broad gravelled terrace which 
ran along in front of the brave old house. And there beneath the 
dark wild porch, above the group of servants that stood upon the 
steps to receive their master, was Alice, with her son and daugh- 
ter beside her, waiting to welcome us, with the happy sunlight on 
her face. 

* -){• -j- 

I bought a sweet cottage, barely a mile from Clere, with forty 
acres of grass-land round it, and every convenience suited for an 
old bachelor of my moderate though comfortable means. 

I took to fishing, and to the breeding of horses on a small scale, 
and finding that I could make myself enormously busy with these 
occupations, and as much hunting as I wanted, I became very 
comfortable, and considered myself settled. 

I had plenty of society, the best in the land. Above all men 
I was the honoured guest at Clere, and as the county had rallied 
round Sam with acclamation, I saw and enjoyed to the fullest 
extent the chamiing English country-life, the like of which, I take 
it, no other country can show. 

I was a great favourite, too, with old Miss Gertrude Talbot at 
the castle. Her admiration and love for Sam and his wife was 
almost equal to mine. So we never bored one another, and so, 
by degrees, gaining the old lady’s entire confidence, I got en- 
trusted with a special mission of a somewhat peculiar character. 

The leading desire of this good old woman’s life was, that her 
sister Agnes should come back with her husband, the Major, and 
take possession of the castle. Again, Alice could not be content, 
unless her father could be induced to come back and take up his 
residence at Clere. And letters having failed to produce the 
desired effect in both instances, the Major saying that he was 
quite comfortable where he was, and the Captain urging that the 
English winters would be too rigorous for his constitution ; under 
these circumstances, I say, I, the confidant of the family, within 
fifteen months of landing at Plymouth, found myself in a hot 
omnibus with a Mahomedan driver, jolting and bumping over 
the desert of Suez on my way back to Australia, charged to bring 
the old folks home, or never show my face again. 

And it was after this journey that the scene described in the 
first chapter of this book took place ; when I read aloud to them 
from the roll of manuscript mentioned there, my recollections of 
all that had happened to us during so many years. But since I 


GEOFFKY HAMLYN. 


467 


have come back to England, these “Recollections” have been 
very much enlarged and improved by the assistance of Major 
Buckley, Agnes, and Captain Brentwood. 

For I succeeded in my object, and brought them back in 
triumph through the Red Sea, across the Isthmus of Suez, and 
so by way of the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, the English 
Channel, Southampton Water, the South-Western Railway, and 
Alice’s new dark-blue barouche, safe and sound to Clere and the 
castle, where they all are at present speaking, unless some of 
them are gone out a- walking. 

As for Tom Troubridge and Mary, they are so exceedingly 
happy and prosperous, that they are not worth talking about. 
They will come either by the Swiftsure or the Norfolk, and we 
have got their rooms ready for them. They say that their second 
child, the boy, is one of the finest riders in the colony. 

“ You have forgotten some one after all,” says the reader after 
due examination. “A man we took some little interest in. It is 
not much matter though, we shall be glad when you have 
done.” 

“ Is this the man you mean ? ” 

I am sitting in Sam’s “den” at Clere. He is engaged in 
receiving the “ afterdavy ” of a man who got his head broke by a 
tinker at the cricket-match in the park (for Sam is in the com- 
mission, and sits on the bench once a month “ a perfect Midas,” 
as Mrs. Wattlegum would say). I am busy rigging up one of 
those wonderful new Yankee spoons with a view to killing a 
villainous pike, who has got into the troutwater. I have just tied 
on the thirty-ninth hook, and have got the fortieth ready in my 
fingers, when a footman opens the door, and says to me, — 

“If you please, sir, your stud-groom would be glad to see 
you.” 

I keep two horses of all work and a grey pony, so that the word 
“ stud” before the word “ groom ” in the last sentence must be 
taken to refer to my little farm, on which I rear a few colts 
annually. 

“ May he come in, Sam ? ” I ask. 

“ Of course ! Uncle Jeff,” says he 

And so there comes a little old man, dressed in the extreme of 
that peculiar dandyism which is affected by retired jockeys and 
trainers, and which I have seen since attempted, with indifferent 
success, by a few young gentlemen at our great universities. He 
stands in the door and says, — 

“ Mr. Plowden has offered forty pound for the dark chestnut 
colt, sir.” 


468 THE EECOLLECTIONS OF GEOFFBY HAMLYN. i 

“ Dick,” I say (mark that if you please), “Dick, I think he 
may have the brute.” 

And so, my dear reader, I must at last bid you heartily fare- 
well ; I am not entirely without hope that we may meet again.^" 


TJMWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. 



^ • • • 





I • . “ 

') . 

\ 

1 ‘ - 'i 


* r’ 


,A 

- 



< ¥ 

i 

I 





I 

I , 

» 

.1 . 

\ 

i 

% • 

I 

f 







JUN J25 1904 

•fr-f, 


» V. 








*■ *r- 





*1^ 




I 


*' 


m 




''j-ff »?«-.■* ©«3 


LA I 


r-f 




> a 


V ' ■'’J?' ^'- ^ ■ '■ ' "* 




^1* < 


^ <-’m \f^'’’'Vj' 

'V V-*'^ ’ ■ 




k - WJf - 

i y < 




fA 


il 


V 




l?l 




iftSAd • 


■ - » * ‘ 


‘. 1-1^4 -'■‘^*‘.j* * . 'Uii 

r 


-A^, ■■•' -4' 


iify-h 

• ■ / , * V 44 i 




ri 


:» -‘Tv ■‘ 




Ml] 






• -> 




\ ' .^* 






fc: ••' . ■•• "' 

• '‘-- - - iL 


riki 




y ’‘ v4T 




*n' 


* K 


f' r 






*»J- .^' 








* '■ -'W- ^ U 

ijjrt ■’ «4^r* JPv- * u ■ ^ 


5iR S'? 


A 


' -»i * , - 

^1 ,. I * 


-r.^ 






♦ I 








V A 


< *-• 


wl ■!• ;r 

‘ - * rV 


',V” 




• >/* 


.♦r • I 




}^ V. 


r 


rf ' 








•12. 








ll * 


uJ* 


*/•» «>i 


?*,« 


*4 




’>u; 


1' V 




•A 








|Y A 






.2*^ 


M 




yiv 


Hfe.-.i'!' 


A 


1!; 




X'< 

' * 


I - 

















* jAI 









*RENTAUro*g 


■t 


> 






«■ 


j 




^ ' .t' ■ 





































